The Good One
by Erin Kaye Hashet
Summary: COMPLETE. Maybe the world really is overrated. But it doesn't matter. For Luke, this is where the world begins and ends, though he'd never admit it. LL.
1. Family Comes First

**Title:** The Good One

**Author:** Erin Kaye Hashet

**Rating:** Mm, we'll say PG-13

**Feedback:** EKHashethotmail.com

**Spoilers:** Through the end of the fourth season—see author's notes for details.

**Summary:** Maybe the world really is overrated. But it doesn't matter. To Luke, this is where his world, his life, and everything about him begins and ends, although he'd never admit it.

**Disclaimer:** Wishing and wishing won't make these characters mine

**Author's Notes:** This story marks a couple of firsts for me. For one, it is my first WIP. Normally I only write short stuff. This story will be seven parts, and while it's not yet complete, I have it all planned out. So, while I LOVE getting reviews (even flames are welcome!), if you make suggestions, I probably will not take them. No offense; it's just that I may have a different idea of where I want this to go than you do. Second, while all my stories have an L/L element, this is my first straight JavaJunkie fic, which is surprising because I'm a huge L/L shipper. I've never written one before simply because I have trouble writing Lorelai realistically—I just don't think the way she talks. So we'll see how this goes.

            For the purposes of this story, parts of "Afterboom," "Luke Can See Her Face," "Last Week Fights, This Week Tights," and "Raincoats and Recipes" did not happen. Parts did, though— you'll see what I mean in Chapter 3.

            I was involved in a debate on the TWoP forums (I'm **Summer InA Bowl** there) about whether Luke or Liz is older. In LWFTWT, Liz called him her big brother, so even in light of the picture in "One's Got Class and the Other One Dyes," I still say Luke is older, and he is in this fic.

            And one more thing. This is not a sequel to anything, but events from my stories "I Stayed," "The Daddy On the Bus," and "What He Wants," are all in here.

Okay, I'm done now. Enjoy.

**The Good One**

**by**** Erin Kaye Hashet**

Chapter 1

Family Comes First

_Don't__ it always seem to go_

_That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?_

            The bus driver, Ernie, never let him off at his house. He'd been driving the bus since Luke was in first grade, and for the first few days of school that year, Luke had been dropped off in his front yard only to go running off. Finally, Ernie had yelled to him, "Hey, Kid!" Ernie called all the students Kid even if he knew their names. "Where are you off to?"

            "My dad's store," the little boy had said, sounding as excited as if he was going to Disneyland.

            Ernie had smiled at him. "Hop back on," he said. "I'll drop you off there."

            Luke was ten now, and Ernie still dropped him off at William's Hardware every day. His sister Lizzie, who was seven, usually got off at home or at a friend's house, but there was no place Luke would rather be than his father's store.

            The bells on the door jingled as he came in. "Hi, Dad!" he said.

            Bill Danes was taking care of some papers behind the counter. "Hello, Luke," he said without looking up. When he did look up he rolled his eyes. "Luke, didn't you wear that shirt yesterday?"

            "I like this one!" Luke replied with a grin, rolling up the sleeves of his Star Trek shirt as he went to join his father behind the counter.

            Bill smiled and ruffled his son's hair affectionately. "I will never understand why you feel the need to wear the same thing every day, you little Trekkie."

            "You need help with anything, Dad?"

            "Hmm." His father frowned, thinking. "Well, you can straighten out the boxes of nails over there."

            "Okay!" Luke went over and concentrated on doing so. Bill finished the paperwork and pushed the papers off to the side. Just then the phone rang.

            "Hello?" Luke heard his father say. "Yeah?...Okay, just let me take that down…Ah, geez, I'm out of paper." Out of the corner of his eye Luke saw his father kneel down to write down the order on the wall behind the counter. "Okay then…three hammers, Phillips-head screwdrivers and three boxes of nails in assorted sizes. Okay. Your phone number?...All right, I'll give you a call as soon as it comes in. Yeah. Okay, bye."

            Years later, Luke would keep that order up behind the counter, refusing to paint over it. He didn't know who the order had been for, but he always remembered the day his father wrote it down. It was what Luke considered the last day of his childhood.

            When Luke and his father got home, there was a familiar car parked in the driveway. "Mia's here!" Luke said.

            Sure enough, when they got inside, Mia Anderson, who ran the Independence Inn, was in the family room. She and Sheila Danes were best friends, and finding her there was not uncommon. "Lucas!" exclaimed Mia, getting up to hug him. "How are you, dear? Still wearing that T-shirt, I see."

            Mia was the only one besides his mother who was allowed to call him Lucas. "I like this shirt, Mia," Luke replied.

            "Oh, well, it's good to stick with the things we like," smiled Mia. "Guess that's why I can't get rid of you."

            Sheila stood up from the couch. She was a quiet, unassuming woman, remarkable only for her constant smile and unwavering optimism. "Lucas, dinner's ready," she said. "Will you go call your sister?"

            "Sure, Mom." He went into the hallway and yelled up the stairs, "Lizzie! Dinner!" He waited awhile, then yelled again. "Lizzie! Mom says come down here." Still no answer. Finally, he went up the stairs and threw open the door to his sister's bedroom. Lizzie was gluing popsicle sticks onto different-sized cardboard boxes. "Liz, get downstairs!" He tugged on his sister's arm.

            "Noooo!" Lizzie howled. "I'm making a popsicle-stick castle! I'm not _done_ yet!"

            "You can finish after dinner. Come on, get down."

            When they got downstairs, Sheila and Mia were hugging goodbye. "So I'll be here at three tomorrow when they get off the bus?"

            "Yes," said Sheila. "Lucas usually gets off at Bill's store, but Elizabeth will get off here. Just stay here with her until Bill gets home."

            "All right," said Mia. She and Sheila hugged again, and Mia's face was serious. "Good luck with everything, Sheila," she said. "You take care."

            "Oh, I'll be fine," Sheila said with a calm smile. "No need to worry."

            As they sat down for dinner, Bill commented, "What was that about?"

            Sheila laughed easily. "Oh, I just asked Mia if she'd be here to be with Lizzie when she gets off the bus tomorrow."

            "Why?" asked Bill between bites. "Where will you be?"

            "Well," said Sheila, reaching for the salad bowl, "I saw my doctor today, and he wants me to go see someone at the hospital tomorrow. You know, just so they can run some tests."

            Bill frowned. "What kind of tests?"

            Sheila shrugged. "Oh, blood tests, that kind of thing. No big deal. I'm sure it's nothing serious." She changed the subject. "Lucas?" she said. "Pass the pepper, please."

            When Luke and his father got home from the hardware store the next day, Mia's car was in the driveway again.

            Bill frowned. "Mia's still here?" he said under his breath, but loud enough so that Luke could hear it. When they got inside, he said, "Mia! Sheila's not home yet?"

            Mia's face was more serious than Luke could ever remember seeing it. "She called and left a message for you," she said. "They're keeping her overnight."

            "_What?" _cried Bill. "Why? What's wrong?"

            Mia shook her head, looking troubled. "She didn't say. She just said not to worry."

            "Oh, that makes me feel better!" said Bill sarcastically. "What hospital is she at?"

            "Hartford Memorial, I believe."

            Bill let out a long sigh. "Thank you for taking care of Lizzie, Mia," he said. Then he called up the stairs, "Liz! Get down here! I need you to get in the car."

            Luke was quiet all through the car ride to the hospital. He was scared, but he didn't know what he was scared for. His mother couldn't be sick. She'd looked fine the day before. Anyway, if something was wrong, the hospital could fix it. When he was eight he'd broken his arm, and he was fine now. He kept trying to tell himself this, and still his stomach felt as if he'd swallowed something that didn't agree with it.

            They found out what room Luke's mother was staying in, and were told that she was resting. When they got there, Bill turned to his children and said, "You kids wait out here. I want to talk to Mom first."

            He closed the door, and Luke and Lizzie sat on the floor. Luke couldn't make out the actual words that his parents said, just their tones of voice. His father's voice kept rising but with the same intensity, as if he was more upset than angry. His mother's voice was calmer, but before long it sounded as if there were tears in it. That scared him even more. He'd never seen either of his parents cry. Then there was a long silence.

            Finally, his father came out. There was a strange look on his face. He closed his eyes, then let out a deep breath. "Go see your mother now," he said. His voice sounded strange, far away, as if was coming from a secret part of him.

            Nervously, Luke opened the door and approached their mother's bed. Lizzie slowly followed him. Sheila smiled tiredly at them. "Hey, babies," she said.

            Lizzie looked stunned. "What's wrong with your arms?" she asked.

            Sheila glanced at the bandages taping down pieces of gauze on her arms. "Oh, the doctors just needed to take a little blood so they could help me," she said.

            Luke bit his lip. "What's wrong with you, Mom?" he asked, dreading the answer.

            "Oh, I'm a little sick," Sheila said calmly. "But the doctors will help. Don't you worry, Lucas. I'm going to be all right."

            "How long are you going to be here, Mommy?" Lizzie asked, her young eyes fearful.

            Sheila's eyes misted over. "Come here," she said. "Both of you." They did, and she wrapped one arm around each of her children. "They're going to keep me here for awhile," she whispered, "just until I can get better. Okay? Then I'll be fine. Don't you worry. I'll be fine."

            But she wasn't fine. Sheila Danes had cancer that was already quite advanced. Word quickly got around Stars Hollow, and people rallied to do whatever they could to help the Danes family. Several people signed up to cook meals for them, so they'd have one less thing to worry about. Others offered transportation for Luke and Liz, or baby-sitting.

            The smell of hospitals was awful. It was a smell of false cleanliness, of too-sweet citrus floor cleaners covering up vomit stains. Years later, that was what Luke remembered most about the hospital—not the uncomfortable chairs in the waiting room, not the miserable cafeteria food they ate some nights that was only marginally better than the bad home-cooked meal it was replacing, not the way the doctors' shoulders sank defeatedly whenever the hospital staff looked at his mother's charts.

            Luke never said a goodbye to her that she would know about, or if he did, it was just a quick, "Bye, Mom," because he didn't think it would be forever. His mother was alone when she lost consciousness for the last time. She slipped into a coma without warning, and Bill, Luke, and Liz came to whisper their final goodbyes. Within an hour of those goodbyes, she was dead.

            It all seemed so unreal to Luke. This wasn't supposed to happen. Mothers weren't supposed to die. Not when their kids were only ten and seven years old. At first he didn't cry at all, just walked around dazed as his sister cried and his father threw himself into funeral arrangements and condolence cards and flower baskets came pouring in.

            It didn't hit him until the funeral, when he stood there looking at the casket and thinking, _My__ mother's in there_. His father, standing behind him, saw the change in Luke's thoughts and gripped his son's shoulder tighter. Luke closed his eyes and, finally, let the tears well up.

            The three of them changed after Sheila's death, and there was no use pretending otherwise. Lizzie smashed her popsicle-stick castle and refused to work on another one. Luke got quieter and barely talked to anyone, even friends and teachers. Bill lost the constant gleam in his eye that had told all of his customers that this was his life and he was content with it. Everyone could see it, and the atmosphere in William's Hardware was always different.

            After awhile, though, Bill started taking on independent home improvement projects for free. Customers who stopped by would mention a broken window or loose shingles that they had at home, and Bill would say, "Well, why don't I come down and take a look at that?"

            Soon, Luke was accompanying his father to these numerous projects in the hours that the store was closed. After about the third one, it got boring, and he whined to his father, "Why are you even _doing _this?"

            "Because," his father replied, "Mrs. Scott needs her doorjamb fixed, and you remember how she sent us that food when your mom was sick."

            "So you're doing this to pay her back?"

            "No," said Bill. "That's just what neighbors do."

            Lizzie was going to after-school day care at the elementary school now that there was no one there to meet her when she got off the bus, since she hated sitting around the hardware store. But after awhile, Luke didn't want to be at the store either. One day, he said to his father, "Can I have Ernie drop me off at home tomorrow?"

            Bill looked at him in surprise. "Don't want to come here anymore?"

            "No," Luke replied. "I just wanna go home. I'm old enough. I'm eleven now."

            Bill shrugged. "All right, I'll make you a copy of the housekey. But what are you going to do when you get home?"

            Luke fidgeted a bit. "Can I—" he hesitated. "Can I cook something?"

            His father raised his eyebrows. "You can cook?"

            "Mom showed me a little," he mumbled.

            Since Sheila's death, they had mostly been having takeout or easy food like Spaghetti-o's for dinner. Bill wasn't quite the cook that his wife had been. "Well, Luke," he said, "I suppose it's okay. Just promise me that you won't burn the house down."

            Luke made good on that promise and also made salad and hot dogs for his family's dinner that night. "Excellent, Luke," said his father, and he smiled, which was becoming rarer. "You're quite the chef."

            Luke started junior high the following September. On the first day, two popular guys remarked sarcastically when they passed him on skateboards, "Nice shirt."

            Luke's face burned with embarrassment. Stupid _Star Trek _shirt. Why was he still wearing it? Only geeks liked _Star Trek_. When he got home he threw the shirt out. It was time to start saving up his allowance money for a skateboard.

            Finally, he had enough to get one. And that skateboard was with him just as much as the _Star Trek _shirt had been. After awhile he started to get good and could do different tricks on it. The boarders at school started to notice. "Hey, kid," one of them said to him one day. "What's your name?"

            He looked around to make sure he wasn't talking to somebody else, then said, "Luke."

            "Luke," said another one, "you wanna go boarding at the park with us today?"

            Luke couldn't quite believe it, and of course accepted. But he had forgotten that before he left for school that day, his father had asked him to pick Lizzie up from day care. Lizzie's friend's mom, who normally picked her up, wouldn't be able to do it that day.

            Luke spent all that afternoon skateboarding, and he was elated. He was finally cool in junior high. But that feeling only lasted until he saw his Uncle Louie heading toward him with Lizzie, who looked like she'd been crying.

            "Luke!" Louie yelled. "Where have you been?"

            _Oops_. Luke bit his lip. "I've been…I've been here," he mumbled.

            "You were supposed to pick Lizzie up from day care! Your dad sent me looking all over for you! Lizzie was standing there crying!"

            Behind him, the other boys were guffawing. Luke didn't even bother saying goodbye to them, because he knew he had just blown any chance he ever had at being popular. But he knew he'd have worse things to worry about when he had to face his father.

            The hardware store was about to close when they got there. When Luke's father saw him, his face hardened. As soon as he finished helping a customer, he strode over to Luke, grabbed him by the shoulders, and shook him. "Why didn't you pick up your sister like I asked you to?

            Stunned, Luke stuttered, "I-I-I'm sorry, Dad. I thought she'd be fine."

            Bill Danes set his lips into a straight line. "Get upstairs, Luke."

            Luke's stomach dropped. "But, Dad—"

            "Upstairs!" he barked, and Luke obeyed.

            When his father came upstairs, Bill took the chair from his desk and set it in the middle of the room. Luke tried to protest. "Dad, I'm sorry! I was just out skateboarding and I…I lost track of time!"

            But his father was already unbuckling his belt.

            "Family comes first, Luke," he said firmly, folding the belt over in his hands. "Always."

            When it was over his father went back downstairs to finish closing while Luke just sat there and sobbed. It seemed to take forever for his father to come back upstairs. But he finally did, and Luke looked up at him as his father stood there for a moment. Then Bill walked over, opened his arms, and wrapped them around his son wordlessly. Before he released Luke, he whispered, "Let's go home."

            The next day, Luke asked Ernie to drop him off at the hardware store again.

            Family comes first. In the years that followed, that would be the phrase that Luke most closely associated with his father. It was what his father said after tragedy struck again the next year, when Bill's older brother, Uncle Mike, died suddenly of a heart attack, leaving Luke's Aunt Linda and cousins Paul and Jim. Paul was a student at Quinnipiac and Jim would start college soon.

            Aunt Linda came to Luke's father a year after her husband's death, close to tears. "I don't know what we're going to do," she sobbed. "We don't have the money we used to have when Mike was alive. I can barely afford to pay for Jim's tuition at UConn, and that's a state school—Quinnipiac's _tuition _is going to be impossible, never mind room and board!"

            Without a word, Bill got out his checkbook. "What are you doing?" asked Linda.

            "How much is tuition at Quinnipiac?"

            Linda gasped. "Bill! No! What are you doing? I can't accept this!"

            "Then pay me back whenever you can," Bill replied.

            Linda sputtered, at a loss for words. "But…Bill, I have no idea when that will be! And it's way too much."

            "Look," said Bill, sounding slightly annoyed, "you wanna tell your kids they can't go to school this year? Paul's a senior, right? You want him to miss out on his last year and not graduate, or do you want me to loan you the tuition money?"

            Linda hesitated. "But what about room and board?" she asked. "I can_not_ let you loan me that much." 

            Bill shrugged. "So Paul can live with us for a year and commute. Quinnipiac's closer to us than it is to you."

            "Commute? He doesn't have a car!"

            "So he can use mine."

            "Bill…"

            "No, really. I never use the damn thing. I walk to work every day. Paul can use it and it won't make any difference."

            Linda sighed. "Bill…"

            "Say yes, Linda."

            Linda had tears in her eyes. "Bill," she said, her voice breaking, "I can never thank you—"

            "Oh, don't get all sappy on me," snapped Bill. "Just tell me how much money you need. It's for your kids."

            Paul did move in with Luke's family that year. He was seven years older than Luke and they weren't very close, but here they were, sharing a bedroom. Luke had never been particularly fond of his room—his walls were bare and his possessions few—but he developed a new appreciation for it when it was divided in half. Paul was not the most pleasant of roommates, either. He was a laconic, serious, twenty-one-year-old who got up, went to school, came home, did homework, and went to bed. Before long, Luke was sick of being at home. He settled into a routine where he went to school, went to the hardware store, went home and ate dinner, and then went out. His father always let him go out because it was, after all, Stars Hollow. How much trouble could he get into?  
            At first he just went skateboarding every night, but he soon tired of that and looked for other ways to entertain himself. One day, he looked at the gazebo in the center of town, across from his father's store, and got an idea. He stole several rolls of toilet paper and some Cheez Whiz from the grocery store, and headed for the gazebo. It wasn't the most original prank in the world, he acknowledged, but at the time he couldn't think of anything else, and he didn't have the heart to do any real damage. He thought he might write a message with the Cheez Whiz, but in the end he couldn't come up with anything clever enough to write.

            The next day was Friday, and when Luke was waiting for the bus, he heard people walking by chattering to each other, "Did you _see_ what was _done _to the _gazebo_?"

            "Oh, I _know_! Who do you think it was?"

            "Could have been any of those young hooligans. Seems like there are more and more of them lately."

            "We'll have to bring it up at the next town meeting."

            Luke smirked. It was the first time he ever really felt contempt for Stars Hollow.

            When he got to the hardware store that afternoon, his father glanced at him, finished helping a customer, and said, "Luke, can I see you upstairs?"

            Once upstairs, Bill reached into his pocket and pulled out a little skateboard keychain. "Didn't you used to have one of these on your backpack?"

            Luke felt his backpack to find where the keychain normally was. It wasn't there.

            "Did you by any chance lose it last night?" his father asked evenly. "Like by the gazebo over there?" He pointed out the window to where people were starting to clean up the toilet paper.

            Luke couldn't meet his father's eyes as he nodded. He was afraid it meant another whipping. But when he looked up, his father was laughing.

            "Oh, Luke," Bill said, laying a hand on his son's shoulder. After a long silence, he said, "You doing anything important tomorrow?"

            Luke shook his head.

            "Well," said Bill, "I think we can afford to close the store for a day. What do you say we go fishing or something? Take some time off?"

            Luke shrugged. "Okay."

            "Great. Now," his father said, gesturing at the crowd by the gazebo, "get out there and help those people clean up."

            Liz wouldn't go—she said she'd rather go to her friend's house—but Bill and Luke put a "Gone Fishing" sign up in the window of William's Hardware and drove up to New Hampshire.

            At the lake, they didn't talk much and the fish weren't biting. The two of them just sat there, lazily dangling their fishing poles into the lake. Luke was beginning to wonder what the point of this was when finally, his father said, "Okay, so this wasn't the best day for fishing." Bill began to reel in his pole. "I think there's a ball and some gloves in the car somewhere," he said to Luke. "Why don't you go get them?"

            They ended up playing catch for about two hours. They still didn't talk much, but somehow it wasn't awkward. "You have a good arm," Luke's father said to him at one point. He threw the ball, but it sailed far past Luke, who went running after it.

            Bill raised his eyebrows, impressed. "Not a bad runner, either," he said, catching the ball when Luke threw it at him. "You start high school next year, Luke," he continued. "Think you'll go out for any teams or anything?"

            Luke shrugged.

            "Think about that," Bill said.

            Luke did think about it, and after awhile decided, _What__ the hell_. In December he went out for the winter track team at Stars Hollow High and was quickly put on varsity. He was only in tenth grade, but he was already one of the team's best sprinters and hurdlers. Almost immediately, he was respected in high school, and he became even more so after he made the varsity baseball team.

            All of a sudden girls who had never looked twice at him were drooling over him. "Butch" Danes had suddenly become Stars Hollow's heartthrob. Luke wasn't particularly crazy about that reputation. He honestly didn't have feelings for any of the girls at SHHS. Once in awhile he'd take a girl on a date, just so that people didn't think he was gay, but that was it.

            It was amazing, Luke thought, how easily you could become somebody else, even among people you'd known your whole life. He'd gone from a happy geek to a skateboarding loner to a popular athlete in the span of five years. He'd gone from "that Danes kid"—he knew townsfolk suspected him of vandalizing the gazebo but they had no proof—to Butch Danes, champion hurdler and pitcher. He didn't remember who had originally given him that stupid nickname. He hated it, but he just let people call him that because it was easier and it meant people wouldn't bother him.

            But all the people he loved were becoming someone else, too. His father was starting to come back, but he would never quite be the man he was before his wife's death. And Liz, who had been a cheerful, creative little girl before Sheila's death and a sullen, moody kid since then, was changing yet again. Liz started junior high the year Luke started high school, and that was the year he caught her smoking pot out by the garage.

            He whacked her arm and she dropped the joint, looking at him in surprise as he crushed it under his shoe. "Hey!"

            "Liz, what the hell are you doing?" he yelled.

            Liz laughed, as she had been doing more and more frequently lately. "Chill out, bro," she said. "Just a little weed."

            "Where'd you get that?"

            "Carrie's brother buys it from the garbage man."

            Carrie Duncan. Luke hadn't liked that girl the minute he laid eyes on her. Like Liz, she was only twelve, but she already dressed like a hooker and wore so much makeup that it was impossible to tell what her face looked like normally. And of course, that made her the most popular girl in school. She and Liz had several classes together, and she'd decided to pick Liz as her new friend. Carrie, Liz, and a couple of other girls had become inseparable.

            Luke pointed an accusing finger at her. "Don't you use that stuff again."

            "What?" Liz laughed an unfamiliar, stoned laugh. "'Sno biggie."

            "I see you doing that again I'll tell Dad!"

            Liz gave him a lopsided smile. "Okay, then, I just won't let you see me."

            He stared at her as she walked away. What had happened to his sweet little sister? When she was younger she'd been so smart, reading all the time, always doing some kind of art project. Now she didn't seem to care about any of that anymore, but she wasn't moody and angry all the time, either. She was laughing and running around everywhere with her friends—but not in a good way, Luke thought. She'd started drinking, smoking pot, coming home with suspicious marks on her neck. Her grades weren't anywhere near what they could have been. Just as he had, Liz was becoming a totally different person right before his eyes—a person he wasn't sure he liked.

            Luke was a senior when he first heard his sister referred to as "Blowjob Liz."

            He grabbed the kid who had said it by his T-shirt and slammed him up against a locker. "_What_?" he yelled.

            People in the hallways stopped and stared. Butch Danes was strong and athletic, yes, but very serious and quiet, and never violent. This was indeed something to watch.

            The eyes of the freshman whose shirt Luke held were widening in shock and fear. "N-nothing," he stammered, the veins in his neck bulging.

            "_Say that again!_" Luke shouted.

            "I didn't—" The kid gulped. "I didn't say anything."

            "Yes you did!" he screamed. "You say that again! You said, 'Tonight I'll be getting it on with Crazy Carrie and Blowjob Liz.'"

            "N-no…" The freshman gasped. "No, I didn't."

            "Yes, you _did_!" Luke yelled, grabbing the kid by the shoulders and slamming him into the lockers again.

            "Hey!" Luke heard the voice of a teacher who was coming down the hallway. "What's going on here?"

            Luke let the kid go. "Nothing, sir," he said. "Just a misunderstanding."

            The teacher looked suspiciously at the freshman. "Tony?"

            Tony glanced at Luke, still looking terrified, and then back at the teacher. "Yes, sir," he mumbled. "Misunderstanding."

            "Well." The teacher narrowed his eyebrows. "Let's make sure there are no more 'misunderstandings' from now on, all right, Mr. Danes?"

            "Certainly, sir," Luke replied, forcing a smile. Tony quickly scampered off down the hallway.

            Stars Hollow High had just added grade 9 that year, which meant that he and Liz were going to school together now, and his status as a star athlete had done wonders for Liz's popularity. She was Butch Danes' sister and Crazy Carrie Duncan's sidekick, Blowjob Liz Danes, a title she either didn't know about or didn't mind. As of late, Luke couldn't stand going home. Liz's friends—Carrie, Anna, Jill, Rachel—were always there, drooling all over him. It was sickening. It was bad enough when girls in his own grade did it, but the freshmen were the worst.

            At the homecoming game that year, Luke sat in the bleachers with some of his friends from track. Stars Hollow High's team was awful, so games, even the homecoming game, tended to be social events more than anything else. Luke and his friends had poured vodka into their drinks—an iced tea for him—and were enjoying themselves much more than they would have otherwise. Luke didn't drink much, and when he did, he could hold his booze well, so he wasn't quite as drunk as his friends thought he was.

            "Heyyyy," his friend Jeff slurred suddenly. "Isn't that your sister over there?"

            Luke looked up. An obviously drunk figure was on the other side of the bleachers, walking on one of them and teetering dangerously from side to side.

            _Shit_. Luke jumped up and ran over to where Liz was inches away from falling. He grabbed her arms and pushed them down to her sides. "Liz, stop it!" he said. "You want to be killed? What the hell do you think you're doing?"

            Liz giggled drunkenly. "I'm fine, I'm fine," she said. "Relax. I was just having fun."

            Luke glanced over the side of the bleachers to the pavement, where Carrie and Jill were standing, laughing. He shuddered, thinking about Liz falling down there, and was suddenly very angry at Liz's friends for letting it happen.

            "Come on, Liz," he said firmly, taking her arm. "We need to get down."

            When they were safely on the pavement behind the bleachers, he yelled, "What were you _thinking_? Do you want her to _die_?" Jill was visibly as drunk as Liz was, so he directed his anger at Carrie, who seemed to be sober for the moment.

            Carrie laughed and looped her arm around him, as if he had ever given her an indication that he didn't want her to disappear off the face of the Earth. "Oh, Butch, Butch, Butch," she said. "Chill _out_, man, will ya? We were just having some fun."

            "You think seeing your best friend's brains splattered all over the pavement is _fun_?!"

            "Don't be such a worrywart, Butch," she said, smiling obnoxiously. "Live a little! It's the homecoming game. You're _supposed _to have a little fun." Carrie smirked. "You ever dare to live dangerously, Mr. Big, Strong Athlete?"

            Luke clenched his fists. Damn her, the stupid little freshman.

            "Oh, hey!" Jill giggled, pointing at two guys off in the distance. "Liz, there's Ryan and Jack."

            "All _right_!" cried Liz, and she and Jill ran off together.

            "So…" said Carrie, placing both hands on Luke's shoulders. "Who's _your_ date tonight, Butch?"

            Luke just glared at her.

            "Oh, come _on_," she said. "A guy as gorgeous as you? I'd think you'd be embarrassed _not _to have a date."

            Luke felt his face growing hot. "Dammit, Carrie, you really are crazy," he growled.

            Carrie held up a 20-oz. Coke bottle that obviously had something else in it, too. "I was saving this for my make-out partner," she said. "What do you say you and I share it?"

            Luke was silent for a minute. _What the hell,_ he thought. _Might as well give her something to brag about_.

            "Okay," he said, and he and Carrie descended beneath the bleachers.

            Luke graduated that spring. His grades were average at best, largely due to his spending more time at the hardware store than he was legally supposed to, but he was state champion in the hurdles that year, so he was still offered full scholarships to a few different colleges. He turned them all down to go to Southern Connecticut State in New Haven, where he could commute and still work at the hardware store. He was sick of being a star athlete and didn't want to deal with that all over again in college, not to mention the pressure of having to repeat his success in high school.

            "Are you _crazy_?" Liz said incredulously when she found out. "You have the chance to get out of Stars Hollow and you're not going to take it? You're going to just hang around here for the rest of your life?"

            Luke couldn't explain it. There had been a time in his life when getting out and seeing the world had sounded attractive to him, but that had been a long time ago, probably before his mother's death, back when he thought that he could leave and come back and everyone would still be there. But he knew now that that wasn't true. His mother wasn't there anymore. None of his friends from high school were there anymore—they'd all left for college and never looked back.

            His father understood. Bill had rolled his eyes a little when he learned that Luke was passing up a free ride to college, but Luke could see in his father's eyes that Bill knew the importance of having someplace to go home to. Of keeping some things in your life constant because it was all you could do when everything was changing. Of figuring out what worked for you and sticking to it. It was why Luke drove to New Haven every day, sat in class, and got up and went home without ever talking to anyone, and why he worked in the store and did homework every night without fail. Bill, too, had adopted a steady routine after his wife's death, and Luke was his father's son.

            Luke wondered sometimes how Liz would have turned out if their mother was still alive. Liz and Sheila had been close, and Liz had changed the most by far after Sheila's death. But Liz, in many ways, was very much Sheila's daughter, and had inherited their mother's optimism. Unlike Sheila, though, Liz focused her optimism on the idea of getting out of Stars Hollow. "Not going to be stuck as some dumb townie for the rest of my life," she said. Luke wasn't sure if that was a veiled insult, but he didn't doubt that Liz meant it.

            For all her hoping, though, Liz didn't do much to further her dream of getting out. She was just barely passing all her classes, which infuriated Luke to no end. Liz was a smart girl, but Luke often wondered about her common sense. Maybe she'd have more of it if she still had a mother around to talk to about things, but for now she was off all the time doing God-knew-what with Carrie and company. Apparently that was "cooler" than getting a grade higher than D in her classes.

            One day during Luke's junior year of college, Bill said to him, during a quiet moment while there were no customers in the store, "You know I went to the doctor today, Luke."

            Luke looked up but didn't say anything.

            "They want me to go to the hospital tomorrow," Bill continued, avoiding eye contact with his son. "They need to run some more tests." Bill finally turned his head and met Luke's eyes. He was quiet for a long time before he said it. "There's a possibility that it might be…cancer." Bill's eyes were studying his son's face carefully.

            Luke stood rooted to his spot on the floor, blinking. "Okay…" he said, for lack of anything else to say.

            "I just wanted to let you know," Bill said. "So you're not surprised if it turns out that's what it is."

            Luke slowly nodded, trying to process this information. "Thank you," was all he could think of to say.

            Later, Luke was grateful to his father for warning him in advance, because Bill Danes did indeed have cancer. The rest of Luke's junior year passed in a blur as his father went into the hospital, got chemotherapy, lost his hair, grew thin and weak. But Luke didn't have much time to think about it. He was too busy trying to stay in school and keep the store going, which was hard to do. His father was in the hospital so often that there were many days when the store had to be closed, and they were losing money because of it.

            Liz wasn't much help. Whenever Luke would yell at her to lend a hand, she'd look away and say, "I can't deal with this," and go off to get drunk with her friends. If he thought about it enough, Luke could understand the way she acted but couldn't relate to her at all. He was still holding onto that lesson he'd had whipped into him years ago, and throwing himself into taking care of his father and the store was the way he dealt with things, trying not to think about the fact that he could very well be orphaned soon. Liz's approach was the complete opposite. She threw herself into anything that wasn't helping out, because that was what took her mind off her father's illness. As much as Luke tried to understand her, to justify her behavior in his mind, she infuriated him.

            But even with all her previous behavior, he was shocked when two days after Bill Danes, frail and sickly, had endured stares and whispers at the Stars Hollow High football field to see his only daughter graduate from high school, a note saying, "I'm off and I'll call you when I get there. Love, Liz," was left in place of his sister and all her things. Bill's remission had barely started and the hardware store was making less money than it ever had. When Liz left, Bill was visibly shocked. As if the cancer didn't make life hard enough for him, losing his daughter seemed to make him lose the little concentration he already had.

            It made Luke violently angry to think about it. He kept waiting for Liz to call, finally, but the one time she did he wasn't home. She apparently just told her father that she loved him and Luke and didn't know she would be home. She left no number for them to call. Luke was sorry, because he was dying to talk to Liz and chew her out: _God damn it, Liz! What the hell do you think you're doing? Dad might be dying and you're killing him faster! Why can't you ever think about someone other than yourself? _

            But he would gladly have given up the chance to yell at her if he could have just had her at home again. As angry as he was with her, he was still clinging to the belief that family came first. He just wished Liz would, too.

            The people of Stars Hollow were helping Luke and his father out as much as they could, but nothing changed the fact that Bill's cancer was back and he wasn't getting better, and the hardware store was failing rapidly. Luke was trying his absolute best not to think about it, but it was hard for him to forget that cancer had consumed both his parents in twelve years. What were the odds? he wondered sourly.

            Liz finally called again, and this time she left a number with a New York area code. Bill talked to her on the phone in the hospital, his smile happier than Luke could remember seeing since before he got sick. Bill hadn't sounded angry at all. He'd just told Liz that he loved her and hoped he'd see her again soon. Maybe that was what melted Luke's anger, because when he did talk to Liz there was none of the yelling he had planned on. Instead, he just got choked up and rasped out, "Liz, come home soon."

            "I will," said Liz. There was a long silence that sounded to Luke as if Liz wanted very much to apologize but knew it couldn't possibly make up for anything at this point.

            He hadn't said goodbye to his mother, but thankfully he'd had time to learn from that mistake. On the last day his father was conscious, Bill reached for his son's hand and said, "You take care of your sister, Luke."

            Luke felt the lump in his chest rising, and only managed to get out, "Okay."

            Bill smiled sadly. "You always were such a good kid," he said. "I love you, Luke."

            Luke swallowed the lump as best he could. "I love you, Dad."

            He was holding his father's hand when the machine flatlined. Luke just closed his eyes as the noise of the machine rang through his ears. He gripped his father's hand fiercely, kissed it, and, with some hesitation, finally let it drop.

             The funeral arrangements served the same purpose as taking care of the store had served before Bill's death. Luke threw himself into them so that he didn't have to think about what had just happened. While he was in the middle of planning things, Liz called.

            "I'm sorry I'm not here," she said. "There's just been so much going on, you know, and I'm trying to figure out what the best time would be to see Dad and—"

            "Dad's dead!" he snapped, surprised to find tears suddenly springing to his eyes. "Dad died yesterday and you weren't here!"

            Luke thought the silence on the other end of the phone would never end. "Oh, my God." Liz sounded stunned. "Oh, my God, Luke, I'm sorry—if I…if I…"

            Luke didn't have the energy to argue. "Just be here tomorrow," he mumbled, and hung the phone up.

            "He was a good man, your father."

            Luke lost count of how many times people said this to him during the wake and funeral. Such a little thing shouldn't have comforted him so much, considering that he'd just lost his last surviving parent, but it did. More people had shown up at his father's wake than he had expected, and every one of them was devastated. He couldn't even keep track of all the stories people were telling him about his father. It amazed him that his father had helped that many people in his lifetime.

            Luke didn't cry at all throughout the whole funeral proceedings. Too much was clouding his mind. How would he take care of his father's will? Would the hardware store ever climb out of debt? Who the hell was that guy standing next to Liz?

            "This is Jimmy," Liz told him, her odd eyes swollen with guilty tears. She noticed Luke eyeing her enlarged stomach and added, "We're pregnant."

            "_What_?"

            "We're married, too. Probably should have mentioned that first."

            "Jesus, Liz." Luke rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache coming on.

            "I'm sorry I didn't tell you," she said. "But I figured…with Dad sick and everything you had to worry about it wasn't a good time."

            "Yes, and now that he's dead I have absolutely nothing to worry about, so yeah, now's a much better time," he snapped. "Thanks, Liz, for your incredible consideration, as always."

            When he calmed down, he talked to her about Jimmy more civilly. "Where did you meet him?"

            "He works at this hot dog place in New York."

            "Hot dog place."

            "Yeah, well, it's a respectable job."

            "If by respectable you mean 'not a crack dealer like Terrence Ryan.'"

            "Oh, will you stop? I didn't date Terrence for that long. And hot dogs are not crack."

            "They've got all kinds of toxins that cause disease later in life."

            "Luke, what is with you? You never used to be such a health freak. Lighten up."

            Luke had never been a particularly unhealthy eater, but his father's death had made him want to eat healthier. It was strange. It wasn't as if his father had had bad eating habits, but seeing how cancer had claimed both of his parents at such young ages, somewhere subconsciously it made sense to him to do anything he could to prolong his life.

            Luke exhaled. "Okay. So you met this guy at a hot dog place, and now you're married and pregnant." Luke didn't want to know which had come first. "Now, do _you _have a job?"

            "At a jewelry store." Liz fiddled with the earrings she was wearing. "I like jewelry, and I wasn't bad at art, you know? Maybe I could start making my own."

            "You weren't bad at school, either, Liz. If you'd just stay in one place long enough to get stuff _done_, you could go to a good school, get a better job—"

            "School's boring. And I like the job I have."

            "Liz, you are going to have a kid to support soon! You can do better than a job at a freaking jewelry store. Would you grow up and be responsible for _once_?"

            "I got married, didn't I?" Liz glared at him, turned on her heel, and walked away.

            Luke didn't like the looks of Jimmy. If he were to be honest with himself, he would say that he simply didn't trust his sister's taste in men and frankly wouldn't have liked _any_ guy she brought home. But Jimmy didn't seem like the brightest crayon in the box, and worse, didn't seem all that thrilled to be married to Liz. And he was going to be the father of Luke's first nephew. _Great_, Luke thought. _That's just great_.

            After Liz and Jimmy went back to New York, Luke had about a million other things to figure out. The hardware store was his now, but it was failing miserably. It had been closed so much when Bill was sick that people had pretty much just stopped going there and brought their business to the hardware store in the next town over. He'd also made up his mind to sell his father's house. It would hurt to see the only home he'd ever lived in sold to some random family whom he'd have to _see_ all the time because it was, after all, Stars Hollow, but it would hurt more to keep living there. It was too big, and it felt so wrong to be living there alone. He kept expecting to see his father, and then the hurt would start all over again. He had to get out of there.

            There finally came one day where he knew he had to decide what to do for sure. He was looking around his father's office, feeling a sense of comfort he no longer got in his house. He thought, _I could live here…_

            But what about the hardware store? It was failing, and besides, Luke didn't have the passion for the hardware business that his father had. He knew what townspeople thought of him—Bill Danes' crabby son—and he didn't want to become a poor replacement for his father. Could he turn it into something else then?

            _Well, I can cook_, he thought, and decided the store would become a diner.

            Months later, the diner was up and running, the house had been sold, and Luke had moved into the apartment upstairs. He had put the money from the house toward turning the hardware store into a diner. He knew that the people of Stars Hollow weren't thrilled about the idea. Bill had always been something of a constant in their town, and Luke would never be able to live up to that. They knew it and he knew it. And why did they need a diner, anyway? They already had Weston's and Al's Pancake World and Teriyaki Joe's and a million other places to eat.

            But the diner had started up, and according to his patrons, his food was great and his coffee was better. It didn't take long for word of anything to get around Stars Hollow, so soon the whole town was going to Luke's Diner.

            Luke had established a comfortable little routine that gave him a sense of calm. With his father's sign still up outside and all of his father's things still on the walls of what had been his office, Luke could pretend that everything was normal. That he wasn't totally alone in a town full of smiling, sunshiney, peachy-keen people whose biggest worry was that the latest town festival would be rained out. That the people in his life didn't keep dying or disappointing him. It brought him a sense of order in the same way taking care of the store had before his father's death, and the way arranging the funeral had after Bill's death, and the way planning the diner had after that.

            The order was disrupted one day when Liz called him, sobbing hysterically. "I got fired," she wailed. "I got fired and we're getting evicted!"

            "Whoa, whoa. Hold on a minute, Liz. Let me take this somewhere else." Luke moved the phone away from the crowded diner. "Okay. Now, how did this happen?"

            Liz sniffled. "I got caught with pot and they fired me from the jewelry store."

            Luke exhaled. "God damn it, Liz! You're pregnant! You can't be doing that stuff while you're pregnant! And said you were going to quit!"

            "I wasn't  _smoking_it!" she cried. "I just had some of it in my bag! And they fired me, and we didn't have enough money for the rent this month, so we're getting evicted!"

            "Okay, okay. Calm down." Luke rubbed his forehead, trying to think. "Can you take the bus to Hartford?"

            "I could take it right now, me and Jimmy."

            "Okay. So I can come pick you up there, and…you guys can stay with me. It'll be a little cramped, but it's just until we figure something out."

            "Really?" Liz's voice took on a hopeful, relieved tone. "Oh, Luke, you're my hero! Thank you so much!"

            "Thank me after you find a permanent place to live."

            Liz was extremely pregnant by then, and less than a week after she and Jimmy arrived, she gave birth. Liz was ecstatic, and despite his concern about the kind of life the kid would have, Luke felt a lump in his throat upon seeing Liz holding Jess. "He's so perfect," Liz said, tears shining in her eyes. "And look, he has Dad's face. Don't you think he has Dad's face?"

            He really did. Luke hoped to God that Jess would turn out more like his grandfather than either of his parents. Especially Jimmy. Luke's dislike of him was growing by the minute. The first time Jimmy had held his son, he had worn an uneasy smile reminiscent of someone trying to politely laugh at a joke he didn't find funny. "Wow," Jimmy had said. "He's, uh…he's really something, isn't he?"

            The day Liz and Jimmy had come to Stars Hollow, Luke had gone out and bought a bassinette, a changing table, and a car seat for when the baby came. He was sure that had started the gossips of Stars Hollow talking, so he'd been careful to make sure he said, "It's for my sister's kid." But in the car on the way home from the hospital, Luke suddenly realized that he'd forgotten something.

            "Do you have any diapers?" he asked Liz.

            "No," she replied.

            "Well, this kid is probably going to need to be changed at some point. Diapers would probably be a good idea." Luke glanced at his brother-in-law. "Hey, Jimmy," he said. "Why don't you go get some diapers? I'll let you off here and you can meet us back at the apartment."

            "All right," said Jimmy quietly, and Luke pulled over and let him out. He wanted to see what Liz did when she was at home with her son, and Luke frankly didn't trust Liz and Jimmy enough to leave them alone with Jess.

            Back at the apartment they waited and waited, and Jimmy didn't come back. "Think he got lost?" Liz asked softly.

            "From _Doose's_? How could he? This is Stars Hollow we're talking about."

            "You think he's hurt or something?"

            Luke sighed. He glanced at the bassinette, where Jess was fast asleep. "I don't know. How about I go look for him and you wait here?"

            Jimmy wasn't at Doose's, nor was he anywhere in the town square. Luke closed his eyes and counted silently as his blood slowly started to boil. _If that asshole abandoned my sister and my nephew…_

            The next day they called the hot dog place Jimmy worked at in New York. They hadn't heard from him, nor had any of Liz and Jimmy's mutual acquaintances.

            When they finally did hear from Jimmy it was through a letter with a Santa Monica postmark and no return address. In it, he said that marriage and fatherhood weren't for him. He wanted a divorce.

            Liz was, to put it mildly, depressed after Jimmy left, and started complaining that Luke didn't have enough alcohol in the house. As much as Luke sympathized with her, and as much as he was willing to cheerfully rip Jimmy's head off for how he had treated her, she was grating on his nerves. She didn't have a job and she was taking up his space. And Jess was constantly screaming and crying, which was driving Luke insane. _God, are all babies this noisy_? he wondered.

            After a couple of months had passed, Liz started complaining again that Stars Hollow was too small for her, and finally one day, with no preamble, she announced to Luke, "I'm moving out."

            Luke looked at her in surprise. "What? Where?"

            "Back to New York."

            "I didn't even know you were looking for a place."

            "I wasn't. A place came to me. Carrie called me, and she's looking for a roommate in the city."

            "So you're going to expose your kid to the horror that is Carrie Duncan?"

            Liz gave him a look.

            "Will you have a _job_? You'll have to pay for this apartment somehow, you know."

            "Carrie says the pizza place she works at is hiring."

            Luke exhaled a long, slow breath. "Liz," he said finally, "can you just promise me something?"

            "What?"

            "Can you promise me that whatever you do, any decisions you make, will all be made with your son's best interests being the first and foremost consideration?"

            "I do, Luke! I'm getting this job to support _him_?"

            "Just promise me."

            Liz sighed. "Okay…I promise."

            She was gone the next day, and a few weeks later was the Firelight Festival. Luke stood alone inside the empty diner, sorting through bills and watching people walking about in the town square. He was suddenly overcome with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia. He remembered that his mother had loved this festival, had exclaimed over how beautiful the fire looked, had grown misty-eyed upon hearing the story of the two lovers who had founded the town. His father had hated the festival and had rolled his eyes at it the way he rolled his eyes at any town function, but he had still gone to humor Sheila, and after her death he had continued to take Luke and Liz there, despite their protests, as a kind of tribute to their mother.

            Luke went outside, took a cup of punch, and wandered around by the bonfire. This was the first time he had ever been to the festival alone. He looked around at all the people who would be going home to their happy houses and families, because that was what people in Stars Hollow did. But what would he be going home to?

            Back at his apartment, Luke looked around and missed his father more acutely than ever. Before, he had been too busy trying to take care of things to feel the horrible, empty ache that he felt right then. His parents were gone. Liz was gone, and she hadn't called in two weeks. For the first time in his life, he was truly alone, a miserable desert island in the tranquil bay of Stars Hollow.

            Luke threw himself down on his bed. Then he buried his face in his hands and cried.

To be continued…

**A/N**: Don't worry, things will get happier in Chapter 2. As I said, I've never done a WIP before, so we'll see how I do with updating. I will do my best to get the next chapter up as soon as possible.

Lyrics by Joni Mitchell


	2. At First Sight

**Disclaimer:** I don't own these characters.

**Author's Notes: **If parts of this chapter sound familiar, that's because I used events from my stories "I Stayed" and "No Use Crying Over a Spilled Drink." Also, thank you for all the feedback. For those who asked, WIP means "work in progress." **Gluglug**- good catch! It is indeed the same Rachel, and you will learn more about her in this chapter.

Chapter 2

At First Sight

_So I try to be like you _

_Try to feel it like you do_

_But without you it's no use_

_I can't see what you see_

_When I look at the world _

            The years blurred together in his mind, but he would always remember 1992. That was the year that both Rachel and Lorelai came into his life.

            He was getting something from the kitchen in the diner one autumn day when he turned around and found a plump, red-headed woman standing there. She looked vaguely familiar, but Luke couldn't place her. "Luke," she said with a big grin, "do you remember me?"

            Luke stared at her blankly. Then his face spread into a big smile as it finally clicked. "Sookie St. James," he said. "Chef's class in high school."

            "Yes!" Sookie exclaimed, jumping a little in excitement. "You were in my kitchen! And Mr. Morgan would just sit there and sing while everybody cooked!"

            Luke laughed. "And you cut yourself and bled everywhere on the day we made tomato sauce."

            "Oh, I was fine!" said Sookie. "Morgan only got upset because he couldn't tell what was blood and what was sauce, which only proves how incompetent _he_ was!"

            Luke shook his head, smiling. "So what have you been up to all these years?"

            "Well, I went to culinary school for awhile," Sookie replied.

            Luke raised his eyebrows. "Culinary school?"

            "Yes! Can you believe it? We took Chef's together, and now that's how we both make our living!"

            "Where do you work?"

            "Well," said Sookie, "I actually just moved back to Stars Hollow. I was hired to work at the Independence Inn."

            "Really!" said Luke. "Mia hired you, then?"

            "Yes, she told me she knew you. But," Sookie cocked her head in the direction of one of the tables, "she might not be my boss for very much longer."

            Luke frowned. "Why?"

            "Well," said Sookie, "Mia's still going to be involved in running the inn, but she just promoted my friend Lorelai here from housekeeping manager to executive manager."

            Luke finally glanced over at the table. A young, pretty brunette sat there with a little girl.

            "So I gather you aren't just here to reminisce about high school?" Luke said. "You and your friends want food?"

            "That would be nice. I've heard great things about this place," Sookie said, sitting down at the table. "Hmmm…" she studied the menu. "Bacon cheeseburger and fries, please. And a Coke."

            "I'll have coffee," said the brunette- Lorelai? He thought she looked vaguely familiar, like she'd been in the diner once or twice before. "Black And a cheeseburger."

            "I'll have chicken fingers and a Coke, please," said the little girl politely.

            "Coming right up." Luke shook his head in amazement as he walked back to the kitchen. He hadn't thought about high school Chef's class in years.

            When he brought the food out, he asked Sookie's friend, "Have I met you yet? I'm Luke Danes."

            She raised her eyebrows and shook his hand. "Lorelai Gilmore."

            "Sookie tells me you work at the inn."

            "I no longer _work _at the inn," she corrected him. "I _run _it now."

            "But Mia's still involved with it?"

            "Oh, yeah, she mentioned she knew you," said Lorelai. She smiled. "Mia's been my saving grace for six years. She gave me a job, gave me a place to live, plenty of coffee…" She picked up her cup. "I wouldn't go here because I told her that her coffee was good enough and it was free, but she said I absolutely had to try it. So here goes. And I'll warn you, I'm picky about my coffee." Lorelai took a sip. "Mm!" She quickly took another sip. "Oh! This is _so good_! We're talking Meg Ryan in _When Harry Met Sally _good!"

            "Thank you," Luke said modestly, and headed back toward the counter.

            "Can I try some?" the little girl asked.

            Lorelai laughed. "Sure, you can have a sip."

            Luke spun around. "What?!" he exclaimed.

            "You got a problem there?" Lorelai asked him.

            "You can't give coffee to a kid her age! It'll stunt her growth and give her all kinds of medical problems when she's older. I'm sure her mother would agree."

            Lorelai glared at him. "_I'm _her mother, and she most definitely does _not _agree."

            Luke did a double take. "You're her mother?"

            "Rory's eight, I'm twenty-four. You do the math, Duke."

            "_Luke_."

            "And may I suggest you stop giving your customers eating advice, Duke? You're going to lose a lot of business that way."

            "Hasn't lost me any yet," he grumbled. "Although losing them soon is inevitable considering that they're coating their arteries with all sorts of fatty heart attack gunk."

            "Um, excuse me? Your patrons are _proud _to be coating their arteries. I know I am. That's what keeps you in business."

            "Well, thank God that the general population has no concern for their health," he snapped, and stalked off back to the kitchen.

            He didn't expect her to come back, but she was there again the next day. "Well, that's one customer I didn't lose," he said.

            "Don't flatter yourself, Duke," she shot back. "For alas, your charming personality has nothing to do with me being here now. I wouldn't be here at all if it wasn't for the fact that your coffee makes me want to bang the counter and go, 'Yes! Yes! Yes!'" She was, in fact, banging the counter as she said it.

            "Got a rather charming personality yourself," he remarked.

            "I am here out of wild, uncontrollable caffeine addiction," she said. "Nothing more. You are simply my dealer. I want to make that very clear."

            "Crystal."

            And day after day, she was back.

            It was funny how little pieces of the past could catch up to you. First there was Sookie St. James showing up. And then, another person whom Luke hadn't thought about in years entered his life again.

            She was a tall, thin young woman with long, curly, light brown hair and a warm, easy smile, and she sat right down at the counter when she entered the diner. "I'd like a chicken sandwich and milk, please," she said.

            There was something very familiar about the woman, but Luke didn't ask until he brought her the food. "Excuse me," he said, "but do I know you from somewhere?"

            She laughed, a pretty sound. "I thought you'd never ask, Luke," she said. "I'm Rachel McGregor. I was friends with your sister in high school."

            Luke blinked. "Rachel! Of course." He remembered her then. Rachel had been friends with Liz, although not one of Liz's closest friends, and he'd always been able to tolerate her better than he could tolerate Carrie, Jill, or Anna.

            "How is Liz doing?" Rachel asked. "I'm afraid we've lost touch."

            "She's, uh…" Liz's second husband had recently divorced her. She was drinking again, and he had said he couldn't be with her until she was sober. The last time he'd talked to her, she'd said she was dating someone new. "She's, uh, living in New York, you know, with her son."

            "Gosh," said Rachel, sipping her milk. "How old is Jess now? He was a tiny little thing the last time I saw him."

            "He's eight."

            "Wow…" said Rachel softly. "That's amazing. I mean, here I am, the same age as Liz, and she's been married and has an eight-year-old kid. And what have I done?" Rachel shook her head. "I haven't done or seen half the things I wanted to by the time I was this age."

            God, she was pretty. "Well, what brings you back to Stars Hollow?"

            Rachel shrugged. "I had a job in Chicago. Photographer for the _Sun-Times_." She smiled. "But I mean, there's only so much you can photograph in Chicago. I wanted to get out, see the world. I mean, there are so many photographs out there, so many moments of…truth, and beauty, and pain, and joy…all just waiting to be photographed." She blushed suddenly. "I'm sorry…you must think I'm nuts. I see you for the first time in years and I can't stop babbling on and on about my job."

            But Luke was fascinated. There was a sort of glow that radiated from her when she talked about her photography, and it was the most attractive thing he'd ever seen. "No, no. It sounds…" He could feel himself start to blush as well. "…interesting."

            Rachel smiled. "Well," she said, "I'm back in town, staying with my parents for awhile, just until I can find a job. I'm looking to see if I can get a job as a travel photographer, you know, with a magazine or something in New York."

            "Well, that sounds…nice."

            Rachel finished her food, paid, and gave him one last smile. "I'll see you around, then."

            "Yeah," he echoed, his eyes following her out the door. "I'll see you around."

            She kept coming by the diner, every day. And every day she seemed more and more beautiful to Luke. She had this grace, this easy way about her that he admired immensely. When she smiled, he felt his heart waxing inside him.

            He wanted to ask her out so badly. And it killed him to think that she would have said yes twelve years ago, when he was Butch Danes the track god. The years had been kinder to her than they'd been to him. Now she, who had been almost as much of a blowjob queen as Liz in high school, was a lovely, elegant photographer destined to see the world, while he was a scruffy, average-Joe diner guy stuck in the same old routine in the same old building he'd spent time in all his life.

            Finally, one day he got up his nerve and decided to do it. _What the hell_, he thought. _If she says no, you won't have her, but you don't have her now_.

            So he asked her. And amazingly, she said yes.

            It wasn't long before she was calling him her boyfriend and he was calling her his girlfriend. She moved out of her parents' house into the apartment with him. Every day Luke woke up and pinched himself. She was such an amazing woman—beautiful, bright, vibrant, interesting. His customers could see the change in him. He was smiling more, laughing more. He couldn't stop thinking about her. And when he thought of Rachel, he thought of her eyes. Rachel had perfect eyes, both aesthetically and practically. They were beautiful eyes, a deep, warm, rich brown color. Rachel had told him once that she had above-average vision, better than twenty-twenty. "Like Ted Williams," she'd said. "Did you know that? That's how he was able to hit so well. He could see each individual stitch on the ball when it was spiraling toward him."

            That was so fitting for Rachel. She was a photographer, so that was what she did—she saw. She saw things, she saw people. She saw beauty in places where other people missed it, and it showed in her photographs. Once, when they'd taken a day trip to Boston, and had opted to wait for another train after the first one that went by was too crowded, they sat down on a bench in an empty above-ground T station. Rachel had glanced down the tracks. "Oh, wow!" she gasped. "Look at that!"

            Luke looked down, expecting to see a strange animal or an unusual discarded object. "Look at what?"

            "The way it looks, with the tracks, and the streetlight, and the trees…oh, I _have_ to get a picture of this!" Rachel opened her bag, pulled out her camera, and started snapping pictures. "It's so gorgeous," she said as she took pictures. "It's like, I don't know…like the intersection of man and nature or something. So…harmonious, I guess."

            Luke looked down the tracks again, and amazingly, this time he saw it. It hit him all at once—an overwhelming rush of beauty. He shook his head in wonderment. Other people might look at that scene, but only Rachel would _see_ it. She saw things like that all the time.

            And she saw Luke. He couldn't figure it out. This woman was so beautiful, inside and out, and she probably could have had any man she wanted. But there was something in Luke that she saw that made her want to be with him. He'd stared at his face in the bathroom mirror many times, trying to see it for himself, and he never could.

            Once, they went on a date to see _Sleepless In Seattle_. "Are you kidding me?" Luke had groaned when Rachel had picked the movie. "I didn't think you were the chick flick type."  
            "And what type _do _you think I am?" Rachel teased him.

            Luke shrugged. "I don't know…usually you're into more…_artistic_ movies."

            "Well, I am," Rachel conceded. "And I usually _don't _like chick flicks. But this one intrigues me—the whole love-at-first-sight thing."

            Luke raised his eyebrows. "You believe in that stuff?"

            "Well, yeah," Rachel said, linking her arm through his. "At the risk of sounding like a Hallmark card, I think _all _love is really love at first sight."

            "Oh, yeah? How's that?"

            "Because," she said, resting her head on his shoulder, "you fall in love with someone the first time you really, truly _see_ him for what he is."

            With her fantastic vision, though, Rachel was also keenly aware of what other people saw, and Stars Hollow made her claustrophobic. "I feel like they're all…_watching _me," she said one day when she and Luke were alone. "There are so many people here who have been here their whole lives. And they remember what I was like in high school. I made so many mistakes…I feel like they're just waiting for me to make another one."

            "That's not true," Luke protested.

            "It feels that way to me," she said quietly.

            No matter how much he tried to convince her otherwise, she couldn't understand. Luke wished he could tell her about how the town had given him a chance. They'd seen him as a troubled youth in his skateboarding, vandalizing days before they'd idolized him as a star athlete, and after that they'd looked at him disdainfully as a crabby, disillusioned townie who would never live up to his father's legacy. But that had all changed over the years. The townspeople respected him now, maybe even loved him. And although he would never admit it to anyone, the feeling was mutual. As much as some things about Stars Hollow drove him nuts—all the festivals, all the gossip, Taylor Doose—it was comfortable and familiar, like the ugly sweatshirt with holes in it that you put on when you have a bad day. It was constant, and it was there. It wasn't going to leave him.

He wished he could say the same for Rachel. She was serious about getting a job at a travel magazine, and would frequently pack up and leave for New York. She wasn't great about warning him, either—she'd let him know the night before, or the morning that she left.

            She did find a job eventually, and soon she was home even less. She was off to different states, different countries, different corners of the world. It made Luke dizzy to think about it. He missed her when she was gone, but true to the cliché, absence did make the heart grow fonder. She was gone so often, though, that he wondered how many people in town even knew that he _had_ a girlfriend.

            One day when she was back in Stars Hollow, he asked her, "When's your next trip?"

            She looked at him, surprised. "Two weeks. Piece on a ski place in the Colorado Rockies."

            "You think, uh…you mind if, uh…" Why couldn't he get the words out? "You know, I've been wondering about, uh…"

            Rachel smiled. "Luke, do you want to come with me?"

            "If…if it's all right with you."

            "Sure it is. Will the diner be okay with you leaving it? I mean, it's only three days, but still…"

            "No, no…three days isn't much. It'll be fine."

            So they went off to the Rockies together, and Luke couldn't quite believe it when he was there, on the ground, staring at a sky of a purer, stronger blue than he had ever seen, and mountains like God—so steady, powerful, immense, important. It hit him all at once that the world was bigger than he had ever let himself imagine. There was so much beauty all around him—he was even breathing it in. He couldn't speak. All at once, he understood why Rachel needed to see so many other places. For the first time, he thought, _God, what have I been missing?_

            "You okay?" Rachel asked gently, snapping him back into reality.

            He exhaled. "Yeah. Wow." He shook his head.

            She laughed. "Come on, let's go."

            They spent the day skiing and marveling in the grandeur of the mountains. Rachel took plenty of pictures for her story, and that night, she said, "There's this little restaurant in town that I want to try. Let's go check it out."

            The restaurant was in a little log cabin in the center of the town, and the wait for a table was long. "But it'll be worth it," Rachel told him. "The food's supposed to be fantastic." While they were waiting, they were told that they could sit in front of the fireplace and order drinks.

            The two of them settled down on one of the couches in front of the fire, and Luke marveled silently at how beautiful she was, with  her brown sweater matched her eyes perfectly, her cheeks windburned from skiing, the fire picking up on the highlights in her hair.

            "Couldn't help admiring your boots," a voice said suddenly. Luke looked up and saw a young woman sitting with her significant other on another couch. She had spoken to Rachel.

            "Oh, thanks," said Rachel. "I got them in New York, actually."

            "Really!" said the man. "Are you from New York?"

            "No, actually, I'm originally from Connecticut, but I work for a travel magazine based in New York. My boyfriend and I are here while I take pictures for a piece on this town."

            "Oh, wow!" said the woman. "I have a friend who's a photographer, too. Also based out of New York. We were recently married and have a place in New York now."

            "Oh, yeah? Whereabouts?"

            Luke wanted to join in the conversation, but he had nothing to add. He hadn't experienced nearly as much as the rest of them. He hadn't been anywhere; he hadn't done anything worthwhile outside of Stars Hollow. He suddenly felt very insignificant.

            But dinner was wonderful, just as Rachel had promised. All he could think about was how lucky he was to have this amazing woman here with him.

            When the waiter came with the tab, Rachel smiled at him and said, "You've been a good waiter tonight. That will show in the tip."

            The waiter rolled his eyes. "Oh, please, I hope it does. Ten years since I got out of college, and this is my first real job. Making my own living has been more difficult than I thought."

            Luke did a double take. This man was in his early thirties. He had a beard and a low ponytail, and he didn't have the air of a spoiled rich kid. Connecticut had plenty of those, and this guy wasn't one of them. Why on Earth would he not have had a job in the ten years since graduating college? Even most rich kids had those.

            But Rachel didn't seem surprised at all. "Really," she said. "I've heard that in towns like this it's quite common for people to be financially dependent on their parents for years after college. Do you know other people who are?"

            "Oh, yeah," the waiter replied. "Lots of my friends."

            Luke just sat there in awe as they kept talking. As she proved time and time again, Rachel could fit in anywhere, with anyone. She was quite good at it. Like a fashion model for places, she could try any place on and look great in it. But Luke—he would be stuck wearing the plaid flannel of Stars Hollow for the rest of his life.

            One Friday night when Rachel was home, the two of them lay in his bed, flipping through the cable channels, when the phone rang. Luke reached for it. "Hello?"

            He could barely recognize Liz's voice through her sobs. "Luke…oh, Luke, I hate myself, I screwed up so bad!"

            "Why? What is it, Liz?"

            She was crying and hiccupping. "Oh, God, Luke, I'm a terrible mother, I can't believe I…I let it get to this…"

            "Liz, what's wrong? Tell me!"

            "He _hit_ him! God, I can't believe it!"

            "_What_? Liz, what the hell are you talking about?"

            "Derek! He hit Jess! He hit my son and oh, my God, I can't believe it's gotten to this!"

            "He did WHAT?!" Luke roared, a rush of fury flooding him so suddenly and so violently that he started shaking.

            Liz started sobbing all over again. "Oh, God, I can't believe this. I-I saw he had bruises, and he said he fell down, but-but they kept happening, and finally he told me what happened, and I'm so _stupid_! I mean, Derek's hit me, too, how could I not connect—"

            "You,_ too_? God _damn _it!"

            "I know, I know," she cried. "He's not here—he left—I don't know when he's coming back…"

             "Liz, you stay right there. I will be down there right away."

            Luke hung up. Then he turned and punched a wall with all his strength. "FUCK!" he screamed. "God damn it all!"

            "Luke?" Rachel prodded gently.

            "The fucking _asshole_ my sister was dating has been hitting her and her son!" he yelled. "How could this happen? How could she keep dating a guy who would do this to her? And what kind of person could _do _this?! To his girlfriend and her eight-year-old kid!" Angry tears were pricking at his eyes, and he turned and kicked the wall multiple times.

            Rachel put a hand on his arm. He jerked away. "I have to go to New York, Rachel. Right now."

            "Let me come," she said.

            "Why?" he said.

            "I've had friends in similar situations, and I'm worried, too. Besides, in the state of mind you're in right now, I'm afraid you might kill someone."

            She did have a point. "All right," he said. "Come with me."

            Rachel was already throwing on some clothes. Before they left, she grabbed her camera bag. "What do you need that for?" Luke asked in irritation.

            "Like I said, I've known people in situations like this," she said. "Believe me, if you're going to file charges, it helps the case tremendously if you photograph the injuries. And this is my best camera."

            In the car on the way there, Rachel asked him softly, "So this has never happened before?"

            "Not this specifically," Luke replied, his anger cooling a little. "But it's always something. Jess's father left her right after the birth, her second husband left her because she was drinking too much, she dated one guy who stole from her. And she's always getting evicted and losing jobs…she never has enough money. And my nephew…God, Liz loves him, but it scares me so much to think about the kind of life he must have…" Luke's voice started to break as he spoke. "Damn it! I know this is that Derek bastard's fault, I mostly just want to kill _him_, but still…how could she even _think _that this is acceptable? How could she not know to leave someone who treats her like this? She deserves so much better."

            "Low self-esteem," said Rachel, sounding very wise. "It's the cause of ninety percent of all problems in relationships."

            When they knocked on Liz's apartment door, he called, "It's Luke and Rachel. Liz, open the door."

            She did, looking awful. Her face was streaked with tears and mottled with old bruises. "Oh, God, Luke, I'm so sorry…" She started to cry again. Luke, no longer in the mood to argue, opened his arms and enclosed her in a hug. "It's okay, Liz," he whispered, feeling irrationally guilty that he hadn't known sooner. "Everything's going to be okay."

            When the hug ended, Luke stepped aside, revealing Rachel. "Liz," she said warmly.

            "Rachel," said Liz, giving her a hug as well. "Oh, I haven't seen you in years! I'm sorry we're not meeting under better circumstances. How've you been?"

            "Pretty well," said Rachel.

            "Come in, you guys," said Liz, and they did. Luke was amazed at how small the place was. It was a one-bedroom that was actually smaller than his own apartment, which had never been meant to be lived in. And this apartment was home to Liz, Jess, and, apparently, the bastard who had hit them.

            Jess was sitting with his knees curled up on the couch. He was a small, skinny eight-year-old with dark hair, and Luke could see black-and-blue marks on his face and arms. The sight of it broke his heart. "Hey, Jess," Luke said, as affectionately as possible, and laid a hand on the boy's shoulder.

            Jess jerked away, giving him a dirty look. "Don't touch me."

            "Okay." Luke had never been good with kids, so he focused his attention on Liz. "So," he said, "can you tell me what happened?"

            She sniffled. "Well, Derek had been hitting me every once in awhile, which I didn't like…but when he wasn't doing that he seemed like such a great guy, you know? Plus he had a job. But then…I started to notice Jess had these _bruises_, and he just kept saying he fell down, which I could buy once, maybe twice, but after the third time I got suspicious, and finally he told me Derek's been throwing him down, hitting him…I just couldn't believe it, and when I asked Derek, he started screaming to me that it was a lie, and he hit me again, too…and then he drove off." Liz burst into fresh tears. "I'm so scared, Luke. I'm so scared of what he'll do when he comes back."

            Rachel looked at her seriously. "You need to call the police," she said, "and get a restraining order. It will help your case if you photograph your injuries, and if you have any threatening notes or anything that he might have written, you need to keep those as well."

            "I think I do have one note he wrote me," said Liz. "Somewhere."

            "Good. Now, I did bring my camera, so we can take those pictures right now."

            After she'd photographed Liz, Rachel turned to Jess. "Now we have to take pictures of you."

            "I don't want to!" Jess replied. He turned, ran, and locked himself in the bathroom.

            Rachel calmly followed him over to the door and knocked. "Jess," she said, "please come out."

            "No!"

            "I'm going to take some pictures," she said, "that might help keep Derek from ever coming back and hurting you or your mom again. It would really help if you'd come out of there."

            There was a pause. Then Jess opened the door and stood there with his arms folded across his chest.

            Rachel smiled. "Thanks," she said, very gently, smoothing his hair. "This will only take a minute, I promise."

            That night was the first time that Luke ever truly saw Rachel.

            One day when Rory Gilmore was ten, she was walking along the shoulder of the road outside Luke's Diner, kicking a pebble, when behind her, a speeding car suddenly turned the corner and headed right toward her. Caesar was minding the diner and Luke was heading back from the bank when he saw the car.

            "Watch out!" he yelled, and without thinking, he grabbed Rory's wrist and dragged her to the side, safe from the car's path. But he did it so suddenly that Rory's entire body sprawled over the pavement.

            Rory stood up and brushed herself off, her blue eyes wide as the car sped off. Her face turned pale. "That almost hit me," she whispered.

            "Rory, are you all right?"

            "Yes," she said, but then she glanced down. Both of her legs were scraped and bleeding, and so was one of her palms. She brushed some of the gravel out of her hand and winced. "Ow."

            "Let's get you cleaned up," said Luke, a bit dazed at how close the car had come to her. "I have some bandages and stuff in here."

            "But I was going to meet my mom," Rory protested. "I was going to walk to the Inn from the bus stop to meet her. She'll worry if I'm late."

            Luke raised his eyebrows. What a good kid, to be thinking about her mother when she was the one hurt. "I'll give your mother a call and explain that you'll be a little late, okay? Those are some nasty cuts you've got and I want to make sure you're okay."

            "All right," said Rory softly. "Thank you, Luke."

            Once they were inside his apartment, he went to the phone and called the Independence Inn. "Hello, is Lorelai Gilmore there?"

            "Ms. Gilmore is busy at the moment," said a male voice with a French accent.

            "Well, this is important. Can you make sure she gets this message?"

            "Fine."

            "Her daughter Rory's had a little accident, but she's fine, she'll just be a little late. She's with me at Luke's Diner."

            "All right."

            When he got off the phone he turned to Rory. "Okay, let me get a washcloth and we'll clean up your knees."

            Rory winced a little when the wet cloth touched her cuts. "Sorry," Luke said. "I'll try to make this as painless as possible."

            "Did that car really almost hit me?" Rory asked, her young face serious.

            "Oh, it came pretty close, but no harm done," Luke said lightly, not wanting to scare her.

            "I could have died," Rory breathed, her face narrowing into a frown. "And I'm only ten. You can't die when you're only ten."

            "You certainly shouldn't," replied Luke, patting her cuts dry with a towel.

            "I don't think I even know anyone who died," she said, talking almost to herself. "What would my _mom_ do if I died? She'd be alone."

            Luke couldn't look at her as she said that. She was the same age he'd been when his mother had died. She was a sensitive little kid, he thought in surprise, thinking about her mom. He hadn't had much experience with kids aside from Jess. Rory was about the same age as his nephew, but what a different breed! She was such a cute, sweet little girl. Like Jess, she'd been raised by a teenage single mother. What in the world had Lorelai done differently?

            "Here," he said, handing her a boxful of bandages. "Sorry I don't have any colorful ones or anything, they're just plain brown."

            "That's okay," she said as she placed them over her injuries. "Thank you for pulling me out of the way, Luke. And thank you for all your help."

            "You're welcome," he said, patting her lightly on the back. "By the way, is Ernie still the bus driver? He'll drop you off at the Inn from now on if you ask."

            When the two of them went back downstairs, they were greeted by a frantic Lorelai, who looked like she'd run all the way from the Inn. She let out a shaky, terrified breath when she saw them. "Oh, my God. Rory…" she said.

            Luke looked at her in confusion. "What are you doing here? I left you a message, did you get it?"

            "All the message said was, 'Rory accident Luke's,'" she said. "Damn Michel. That's one French concierge who's going to get his ass kicked. Rory, what _happened_?"

            "I was walking along the side of the street and a car almost hit me," she said. "Luke pulled me out of the way and I got all scraped. He cleaned me up and gave me band-aids."

            The color drained from Lorelai's face. "She was almost hit?" she said in a very strange voice.

            Luke shrugged "Well, yeah, I mean, I tried to get her out of the way so she wouldn't get hurt, but she fell, and…hey, what can you do. So I decided not to send her to you looking all torn-up."

            Lorelai bent down and wrapped Rory into a hug. Luke saw her eyes tear up, and it was strangely moving. He'd never seen Lorelai let her guard down like that before. She was always so perky and bubbly, hyped up on caffeine when he saw her. He was seeing a glimpse into Lorelai's fears and loves now. It was a whole other side of her.

            Lorelai stood up and looked him straight in the eyes. "Thank you, Luke," she said with a sincerity that greatly enhanced the normal connotation of the words.

            She never called him Duke again.

            It was easy to pinpoint that as the moment Lorelai stopped hating his guts. Determining the exact moment he and Lorelai became friends, however, was harder. They started talking more when she came into the diner, and he began to learn new things about her. Rachel was gone more and more often, and it occurred to him that since he'd started dating Rachel, he had lost all interest in other women.

            But he became interested in Lorelai. Not romantically interested, just interested in her as a person. How strange it was that a woman could come into his diner every day for two years and he could know so little about her. He gradually began to learn more. He'd known that she'd had Rory when she was sixteen, but he hadn't known that she had been born into an extremely wealthy family in Hartford to parents who didn't understand her and whom she didn't get along with. He hadn't known that, against her parents' wishes, she had refused to marry Rory's father, or even to finish school, despite being one of the top students in her class at an elite prep school. He hadn't known that she'd run away from home with Rory as soon as she turned eighteen, or that she'd started out working as a maid at the Independence Inn before working her way up to executive manager. He hadn't known that she and Sookie were talking about opening up their own inn one day. And although he'd known that Rory was an extremely bright and special kid, he hadn't known that she was reading far above her grade level and dreamed of attending Harvard.

            She was fascinating, that Lorelai, and she was fascinating in a different way than any other woman he'd ever known, including Rachel. Rachel had made her life fascinating. Lorelai had been made fascinating by life.

            Monumental things began to happen in 1996. First, Mia decided to move to Santa Barbara. Her husband had passed away the year before, and she said she needed a change of scenery. Luke couldn't believe it. Running the diner was his way of staying connected to his father, but Mia was really the last connection he had to his mother. "Keep in touch, Lucas," Mia said, hugging him, before she left. "I'll always be here if you want to talk."

            He felt like whining, "But it won't be the _same_," like a little kid. He would have meant it, though. It seemed like he should have adjusted to change as he got older, but experience had taught him that when life changed, it was usually for the worse.

            One person's life did change for the better that year, though. Lorelai came bouncing into the diner one day, grinning like a bookworm with a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble. "Huge vat of celebratory coffee," she said.

            "And what are we celebrating?"

            "Since having Rory," she said, "I have had three goals in my life. One is to be a good mother—time will tell on that one, but Rory's a great kid and as of now doesn't seem ready to write a tell-all book, so I think at the very least I've got Joan Crawford beat. Two is to own my own inn—that's a fairly new one, so I've got some time on that. But three…" Her grin got even wider. "Three was to own my own house."

            "You bought a house?"

            "I bought a house!" she beamed. "I've been saving up for this for _years_!This gorgeous two-story house in Stars Hollow. It's got a bedroom upstairs for me, and a bedroom downstairs for Rory, and a kitchen which of course we'll never use…you know, I seriously think that the earth could just fall into a big black hole right now and it wouldn't spoil my mood."

            "Wouldn't your new house get sucked down the black hole with the world?"

            "Yes, but my mood wouldn't."

            Luke smiled and shook his head. "Congratulations, Lorelai. One celebratory pot of coffee coming right up."

            Later, she took him up on his offer to help her move in. It was a gorgeous snowy day in February, and the Gilmore girls were jubilant. "Rory, we can make a snowman!" said Lorelai as they were arranging chairs around a table inside the house. "I have _always_ wanted to make one in my own backyard! My parents would never let me because it was 'unbecoming' in a high-class neighborhood like theirs." She smiled like a little kid. "Now I can have a snowman all of my own."

            "Snow_person_," Rory corrected her. "We mustn't be un-PC."

            "Person schmerson. Who cares, we've got a backyard! C'mon!" Lorelai abruptly grabbed Rory's hand and ran with her into the yard. "Luke, you too!" she yelled, and somewhat uncertainly, Luke followed them out. Once there, Lorelai and Rory flopped onto the snow and flapped their arms and legs. "Wait, wait," Lorelai cautioned. "Don't get up just yet." She flipped over, but instead of drawing a halo above her head, she drew tiny little horns. "See? We're snow _devils_! Ha _ha_! A symbol of my new existence as a home-owning suburbanite. I may _look _like a Volvo-driving soccer mom, but—what's that? Could that be a pitchfork hidden behind my white picket fence?"

            "I don't _play_ soccer," said Rory.

            "And you don't have a Volvo _or_ a white picket fence," added Luke.

            "Every home-owning suburban mother has a Volvo and a picket fence and a soccer-playing child in essence if not in actuality," Lorelai replied with mock solemnity. "So soccer-playing child must don the obligatory horns for cursing her mother with the soccer mom stigma." She bent over and drew horns above Rory's head. Then she glanced at Luke with a wicked grin on her face. "You too, now, Diner Man."

            Luke shook his head. "Uh-uh. No way. You know, we still haven't put everything in the house." He turned and started to walk back toward the car, but he was stopped by a cold blow to his back. "Hey!" Lorelai was standing there smugly when he turned around.

            "It's either an angel or a snowball down the flannel shirt," she said.

            Luke rolled his eyes. "Well, fine, if it means that much to you," he said, and flopped down in the snow.

            "Now _flap_," Lorelai demanded.

            He obeyed, half-heartedly. "Now I guess I get devil's horns above my head, too?"

            "Oh, no," said Lorelai, reaching above his head to draw something. "You keep me in coffee and you help me move in, and for that, my friend, you get a halo."

            When they were done, they stood outside gazing at the house as Rory excitedly unpacked her books inside. "This is a beautiful house," said Luke.

            "Yeah," she murmured quietly, looking at her feet.

            He frowned. "What's wrong?" he asked, concerned.

            She sighed. "Oh, nothing," she said. "Nothing important. It's just that—"

            "What?" he prodded gently.

            "Well," she said slowly, "this is going to sound stupid, but this is one of the few times in my life I've ever wished I was married. I mean, ninety percent of the time I love not being dependent on anyone, that Gloria Steinem-worshipping side of me, but… somewhere in the back of my mind, I really _do _want that whole husband-Volvo-picket fence thing." She gave a little smile. "But no soccer. Thank God Rory never got into soccer."

            "Soccer moms do kind of freak me out," he agreed quietly.

            "Yeah. But you know what I mean." She sighed again. "I think part of me just kind of hardwired my brain to reject anything my parents wanted for me. I mean, as much as I love the life I have, I fell into it completely accidentally. Eleven years ago I thought I'd be going to college, getting a job that _didn't _begin with me cleaning bathrooms, getting married and having the 2.2 kids or whatever it is. You know, in the back of my mind, I thought that when I did buy a house like this, I'd have a husband there all ready to carry me over the threshold. Even if it meant the little feminist Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder would be screaming, 'No! Lorelai! You're a strong, independent woman who doesn't _need _a man!'"

            Luke was silent for a minute. Then he said, "Want me to do the honors?"

            She laughed uncertainly, as if she wasn't sure whether or not he was kidding. "Aw, that's very sweet, Luke, but you don't have to."

            "No, seriously," he said. "If it will make you feel like you really belong here."

            She smiled at him, very sincerely. "All right," she said.

            "Okay then." He wrapped one arm under her shoulders and the other beneath her snow-covered knees and lifted her off her feet. She was a tall woman but surprisingly light, especially considering how much she ate every day at his diner.

            Her smile was even wider once he'd carefully placed her on the couch. "I better get going," he said. "But you need anything, any kind of help or anything, just give me a call."

            "Thanks, Luke," she said. "You're a really good friend, did you know that?"

            1996 was also the year that Luke decided to make a change in his own life. Rachel was home with him, and he was happy. He had no doubt in his mind that he was in love with this beautiful, fascinating woman named Rachel. There was only one thing left to do.

            After the diner had closed for the night, he showered and changed into nicer clothes, then closed the diner's shades, lit a candle, and cooked Rachel her favorite meal.

            When they'd finished dinner, he could feel himself shaking slightly. "Rachel," he said, "I have something to ask you."

            "Yeah?" she said, smiling. "Ask away."

            "Okay." He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. "I love you, Rachel," he said. "I love…everything about you. Every day that I'm with you I'm just continuously amazed, and…I would love to spend the rest of my life being amazed by you. So…I'm sorry I don't have a ring yet, but…Rachel, will you marry me?"

             Luke watched as the smile slowly faded from Rachel's face. "What's wrong?" he asked her.

            "Luke," she said slowly, "what do you see in our future?" She looked up at him. "You see us married, together- doing what?"

            He was starting to sweat. "I see us…I see us doing the same thing we do now, I mean, that's working, right?"

            "You think it is, Luke?" He studied Rachel's face. "You think this is working? You running this diner, me running off to take photos all over the place?"

            He didn't know what to say. "I guess it's not, then."

            "Could you ever leave this place, Luke?" she asked him, gesturing to the diner around her. "Could you give all this up and travel around the world with me?"

            He was silent as he tried to imagine it, and failed. He couldn't leave Stars Hollow, or even the diner. Rachel's life was anywhere but there, seeing the world from every possible angle. His trip to Colorado had already proved to him that he would never be able to see the world from any angle except the one behind the counter at his diner.

            "That's what I thought," Rachel said quietly, and got up and left the table. Luke sat there for a minute, letting himself go numb. Then he leaned over and in a quick, angry puff, blew out the candle.

            The next day, Rachel's bags are already packed. "Rachel," he said, his voice breaking, "you don't have to do this."

            "But I _do_, Luke," she said, her eyes tearing up. She went over to him and gave him one last, desperate hug. "I love you," she whispered, "but…this just isn't right."

            And just like that, she was gone.

            The greatest irony was that once she was gone, he finally understood what she meant about Stars Hollow being too small. It was killing him to be in his apartment, with every reminder of Rachel, every bit of proof that Rachel had lived there, gone. He couldn't even pretend that she'd be back like all the other times. This was permanent; he could feel it. But as much as it killed him to be in his apartment, it would have killed him more to have to face the people of Stars Hollow. They all knew. They had to have known. Nothing could ever stay a secret in Stars Hollow. If he went anywhere, even downstairs, he'd have to deal with everyone's sympathy when all he wanted to do was to forget that Rachel ever existed.

            So he closed the diner for a day, told Caesar not to come in, pretended he was sick. All he could do was to lie in bed and mindlessly flip through channels, watching whatever junk happened to be on.

            Of course, that only worked for a day, and common sense, a need for income, and a lack of excuses forced him to go back to work again. He felt his irritation grow when he saw that Patty and Babette were two of his first customers that day. "Oh, dear," Patty said, patting his arm, "I'm _so_ sorry. Any girl who would leave you like that isn't good enough for you anyway."

            "I don't want to talk about it, Patty," he said, his voice measured to try to contain his feelings.

            "Oh, I _never_ liked her," Babette continued as if she hadn't heard. "Never trust a gal who can't stand still."

            "I _said_, I don't want to talk about it," he said, his voice rising a bit.

            "Well, the good news is there are plenty of available young women out there," said Patty.

            He couldn't stand it. "I _said _I don't want to _talk _about it!" he barked so loudly that the whole diner fell silent.

            _Damn_.

            The good news was that people shut up about Rachel and everything else for the rest of the day. The bad news was that the silence only served as another reminder that Rachel was gone.

            One night, about a week after the breakup, he was lying alone in bed. He couldn't sleep. It was three o'clock in the morning, and the diner would open in only two hours. The ache deep inside of him was awful. Why did everybody keep leaving him? His mother had left him. His father had left him. Liz had left him, and she hadn't called in months. Last he'd heard, she'd gotten a restraining order against Derek, but how would Luke even know if his advice had failed and Liz had gone back with him again? Mia had left him. Rachel had left him. Even his Uncle Louie, whom he couldn't stand, had moved to Orlando.

            Why did everybody keep leaving? The people he loved were all disappearing from his life. Everyone who hadn't died didn't need him. And feeling unnecessary was the worst thing in the world.

            Luke got up and opened his father's desk. Bill had had two guns—the war re-enactor musket that had been buried with him, and the revolver that he'd kept in case the hardware store was robbed, as if there had ever been a robbery in Stars Hollow. Luke pulled that revolver out of the desk and stared down its barrel. His breathing was loud and nervous.

            He'd gotten used to thinking that he could fix anything if he tried hard enough, as long as no one was dead. He'd turned the failing hardware store into a successful diner. He'd helped Liz out more times than he could count. But now Rachel was alive and he was alive, and there was nothing he could do to make them be alive together again. He couldn't take his eyes off the gun.

            And right on cue, the phone rang.

            He jumped, then breathed to calm himself, and it crossed his mind that it was three o'clock in the morning and who the hell would be calling him then as he went to pick up the phone. "Hello?"

            "Luke! We're cold."

            It was so unexpected that it took a minute for the voice to register. "Lorelai?"

            "Luke, sorry to call like this, but there's a window in my house that's stuck and it's open a crack and in any minute we're going to have Santa Claus and penguins running around here. Except those two things are at opposite poles…but that's how cold this house is, we'll have them both! Even if it defies logic, which I guess it does but at three in the morning what doesn't, right? And is Santa Claus too fat to run anyway? I guess he has the elves to run for him…so scratch that, we'll have _elves_ and penguins running around here so could you please help me with it?"

            Three in the morning. Even without coffee she was like that.

            He let out a deep breath, bringing himself back into the real world. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'll be right there."

            Years later, he knew that he would never have gone through with it. He actually had to laugh thinking about it. The idea of a suicide in Stars Hollow was absurd. Had it _ever _happened before? He doubted it. It would be like committing suicide on the It's a Small World ride at Disney World. No one would have any idea what to do. But at the time, all he could think was, _If__ Lorelai hadn't called…_

            He got rid of the gun the next day. The next time he saw her he gave her some bread he made. He knew, even as he was baking it, that it was ridiculous. "Lorelai, thank you for stopping me from killing myself. Here's some bread!" But he couldn't think of anything else to do. Lorelai looked stunned when he handed it to her. "Luke," she said, "you're the one who's been helping me out. I should be giving _you_ bread."

            He waved his hand. "Don't worry about it," he said. "Don't worry about it."

            It took a long, long time, but eventually he was able to remember who he was before Rachel had come into his life. His heart began to heal, and life became bearable again. He was right back at square one: in the apartment, in the diner, in Stars Hollow.

            And there was Lorelai, day after day after day. It was as hard to get over Rachel as it was easy to fall in love with her, so it was a long time before it even occurred to him to be attracted to Lorelai. But then he was, and it happened a little bit every day. He started to love her beautiful blue eyes, her mischievous smile, her rapid-fire way of speaking, her quick wit, her motherly concern for Rory. He tried to ignore it, but it wouldn't go away. The attraction just grew and grew. _No_, he tried to tell himself. _You're not attracted to Lorelai. You just miss Rachel. You're looking for somebody to replace her, that's all. And Lorelai's here every day, so she's the logical choice._

            But then one day, after Rachel had been gone for a couple of years, Lorelai wasn't there. The strangeness of it began to nag at him. He had settled into his own little day-by-day routine, and Lorelai was included in it. It completely threw him off not to have her there, cracking her jokes, making her jabs at him, bantering back and forth, giggling with Rory like a teenager. He tried to go on with the day, to serve coffee and food to everyone else who came in, but he couldn't get Lorelai off his mind.

            At some point that day, he heard Patty say to Taylor, "Such a shame about Lorelai. The poor dear."

            Luke spun around, his heart thumping. "What?" he said. It came out louder than he'd intended, and he quickly lowered his voice. "What's wrong with Lorelai?" he asked.

            "Oh, she took a spill during my yoga class and ended up with a broken leg," said Patty. "The poor thing's got a cast up to her hip. I don't know how she's going to manage to get around."

            Luke's heartbeat slowed. A broken leg. Well, it could have been worse. But still...life must be so much more difficult for her now.

            That night he stopped over at her house. Rory answered the door. "Hi, Luke!" she said.

            "Hey, Rory," he said. "Brought you and your mom some coffee."

            "Oh, thank you!" she said.

            "How is your mom doing? I heard about her leg."

            "Well, she's doing better than yesterday. Yesterday she was in so much pain she had me hold the painkillers because she was afraid she'd get addicted. But she said the upside to that would be getting to meet all those celebrities in rehab."

            "Do I hear a Luke?" he heard a voice call from the living room.

            "You do," he answered. "I come bearing coffee."

            "Oh! Luke, you're my savior! Get in here!"

            He entered the living room as Rory went back into her room to do homework. Lorelai was lying on the couch in front of the TV with her leg propped up. He set the coffee down on the table and she opened her arms for a hug. "Oh, Luke, thank you so much!" she said.

            "You're welcome," he said, hugging her back

            "Sit down," she said, and he did.

            "So how are you _really _doing?" he asked her.

            She sighed. "Well, physically," she said, "I'll live. Stayed home from work today, but tomorrow I'll be back. Sookie's going to be picking me up from now on, cause I can't drive, and we were already experts in ordering food out."

            "But…" he prodded gently.

            He saw a change in her eyes. "Well, a broken leg isn't the end of the world. I can live through this without any real problems, but, you know, it kind of got me thinking. What if I was in a car accident or something? Or what if I was sick? What if I _died_? You know, I've never actually drawn up a will, because when I had Rory I was sixteen and thought I was going to live forever. And I mean, I'm only twenty-nine now, and that's probably a little young to be having a _memento mori_, but…what would happen to Rory if I died?" She looked up sharply. "Oh, I'm sorry, Luke, I forgot…your parents…"

            "No, no, it's okay," he said.

            "Well," Lorelai sighed, " She loves her father to death, and he's a good guy, but you can't depend on him for anything. And my parents would mean well, they always do, but…look where their good intentions got me." He hadn't seen her look so serious, so vulnerable, since the day he'd pulled Rory away from the car. "I don't know what I'd do."

            He didn't know what to say, so he just reached over and patted her arm. He wanted so badly to ease her pain, to say something that would make her feel better, but he had no idea what to say. He felt a lump in his throat, and he studied her. And that was the moment that he first truly saw Lorelai.

To be continued…

**A/N: **Next chapter will deal with Luke's perspectives on events that actually happened on the show. From there the story will move forward.

By the way, I really did have a Chef's teacher named Mr. Morgan who would sit there and sing during class!

Lyrics by Bono and The Edge


	3. Siren Song

**Disclaimer: **Dear Mrs. Palladino, these characters are thine

How I long for the day that I can say that they are mine!

But your Luke and your Lorelai are yours alone 'til then.

Thank you for creating them. Love always, Erin.

**Author's Notes: **This is the chapter that deals with Luke's perspective on the events that actually happened on the show. After this, the story will move forward. I realize there's not much dialogue in this chapter, but that's because it's not my dialogue, and I'm not going to steal from the GG writers. The bits of dialogue that actually are from the show are in italics.

As I said before, for the purposes of this story, parts of "Afterboom," "Luke Can See Her Face," "Last Week Fights, This Week Tights," and "Raincoats and Recipes" did not happen, but parts did. You'll see what I mean.

And, if you're experiencing déjà vu, it's because elements from my stories "I Stayed," "What He Wants," and "No Use Crying Over a Spilled Drink" are all in here.

Chapter 3

Siren Song

_So tell me what I see when I look in your eyes_

_Is that you, baby, or just a brilliant disguise?_

Contentment was part of Luke's nature. He had always been one to accept his life without truly desiring to improve it in any way. Improvements were changes, and he didn't deal well with change. It was why he hadn't accepted those scholarships to college, why he'd been willing to maintain his long-distance relationship with Rachel even when she could see it wasn't working, why he let his relationship with Lorelai stay exactly where it was. It was true that there could be the potential for something better than the relationship they had, on the chance that she felt the same way about him, but the relationship they had, with her as his customer and his friend, was working fine. If he did nothing to change it, he'd still have that relationship. If he tried to change it, he might get a romance with the most amazing woman in the world—or he could end up not only getting his heart broken all over again, but losing Lorelai as well. At least with Rachel, he'd only lost a girlfriend. If he lost Lorelai, he'd lose one of the best friends he'd ever had. And so, for years, their relationship remained the same, and he was content with that.

Years passed, and before he knew it, Rory was sixteen and headed for a fancy private high school. Luke had known the little girl for half her life. And even though she was well into her teens, he still thought of her as a little girl. He couldn't quite believe it when she started dating the bag boy from Doose's, that Dean kid. Dean was nice enough, and he seemed polite and respectful. But even so, Luke had the urge to narrow his eyes menacingly at the kid whenever he was in the diner, and he knew for a fact that he would rip Dean's head off if he ever caused Rory to shed a single tear. The fact that he felt so strongly about this surprised him. _What the hell? _he thought. _You're not her father. You have no claim to her at all._

Rory's sixteenth birthday party was the first time he really caught a glimpse of Lorelai's parents. They looked pretty much the way he'd imagined them: prim, poised, austere. They kind of intimidated him, so he avoided talking to them at the party.

A couple of months later, he was in the diner trying to get the voices of carol singers out of his head when in came Lorelai, minus her usual smile. He knew that she and Rory hadn't been on the best of terms for the last week. It was all over town that Rory and the bag boy had spent the night at Patty's studio after Rory's dance. He knew Rory well enough to know that her judgment was good and it probably had been as innocent as she'd said, but he'd been a sixteen-year-old boy once and he knew what all sixteen-year-old boys wanted. His dislike of Dean continued to grow.

But that wasn't all Lorelai was upset about that night. Apparently the events following Rory's dance had caused a fallout with her mother, and she'd been uninvited from her parents' Christmas party. Luke couldn't believe that. His family had had their share of fights, but uninviting a family member from a party would have been unthinkable. He knew that Lorelai's parents were a part of her life again, because they were paying Rory's tuition at the school she went to, so she had been seeing them a lot more often. But this early Christmas party, apparently, was something she'd gone to every year. Luke couldn't stand to see her look so sad, so he went into the kitchen and used the little artistic skill he had to fashion a burger that looked like Santa. It did get her to smile, as she told him that nobody had ever made her something quite so disgusting.

Then her cell phone rang, and he pointed to the no cell phones sign and told her to take it outside. He hated cell phones. It drove him nuts to look out and see tables of people all talking into pieces of plastic. As he was arguing with her about it, she missed her call, and as she was checking her messages, Taylor and the carolers came in asking for some hot chocolate. Luke wasn't willing to give Taylor anything for free, so of course that turned into an argument, but then the next thing he knew, Lorelai was standing up, screaming for the number for a cab company. Her father was in the hospital, according to Rory's message, but Rory had taken the car and she had no way of getting there. Luke froze, suddenly flooded by the memory of being ten years old and going to see his mother in the hospital for the first time. He didn't give it a second of thought before he told Lorelai he would drive her. Once he did, the details came quickly. He'd pay for everyone's food and Taylor could take his hot chocolate and lock up. All he knew was that he had to get Lorelai to the hospital.

There was that vulnerable side of her again, in the car on the way there. She wondered aloud if her father was dead. Luke told her he wasn't, then immediately regretted it. His mother, after all, had said that she would be fine. Lorelai started talking about her father—how she thought she should be remembering the time he bought her a Barbie or something, but it had never happened. Her father was not a bad guy, she said, and he always tried to do what he thought was the right thing for his family. He did things by the numbers, and Lorelai didn't. She thought she must have been such a disappointment to her father. Luke couldn't believe that, and told her so. How could Lorelai be a disappointment to anyone? Sure, she'd gotten pregnant and dropped out of high school, but since then she'd become the manager of a successful inn and a valued member of the community, not to mention the mother of a very sweet, highly intelligent teenage daughter. To know Lorelai was to love her. How could any parent be disappointed in that? Lorelai told him she thought he'd buy a Barbie for his daughter, and that startled him. He'd gotten used to thinking that he'd never have kids. Having a kid with Lorelai, though, would be different. She told him he'd make a great dad, and he told her she already made a great mom. Lorelai knew this, and replied quietly that it was the daughter part she didn't have down yet. Luke felt a pang inside, and wondered silently what was worse: losing parents whom you were close to and who you knew were proud of you, or losing a parent you'd already proven you could live without, never knowing how he felt about you?

It only occurred to him later that he could, conceivably, have dropped Lorelai off at the hospital and left. But he knew Lorelai better than she realized. She'd been coming to his diner every day for eight years, and sometimes he knew what she was thinking better than Lorelai herself. And he knew that right then that Lorelai was losing it, and she needed someone there. She tried to put on a brave face in front of Rory, who was scared of losing a grandfather she was just getting to know, but Lorelai was scared to death herself, too scared even to go visit her father. It was killing Luke to be there, taking in that horrible hospital smell and seeing people being wheeled by. All kinds of bad memories were coming back to him. But Lorelai needed him there, so he stayed.

He had his first real conversation with Emily, Lorelai's mother, that day. Until then, he'd mostly heard Emily horror stories, but the woman seemed surprisingly human as she sat there next to him. He sympathized with her. It was horrible to see your spouse lying in the hospital like that. He remembered how hard it had been on his dad. He ended up telling Emily about how he'd kept the all of his father's things, even his sign, in the diner. Then Emily abruptly asked him what was going on with him and Lorelai, and told him they were both idiots when he insisted there was nothing.

But there _was_ nothing, nothing outside a wish he kept buried in the back of his mind, a winning-the-lottery kind of wish. When they'd shown up at the hospital, Emily had asked Lorelai if she was on a date, and Lorelai had replied, "It's _Luke_, Mom," as if the idea of the two of them being on a date was really that ludicrous. He would never be anyone to her but the man who provided her with coffee and a hug when she finally broke down—she only let herself break down after she knew that her father was going to be all right.

She brought him a hat as a present after her father went home, and the two of them stood in the empty diner with the lights out, watching the Christmas pageant rehearsal making its way through the town. Lorelai said it was hard to imagine living anywhere else. Silently, he agreed.

Every once in awhile, it started to kill him that she would always be there, not about to pack up and leave like Rachel, but she would never be there _with him_. It was in these moments that he started to think that maybe he should do something about that, and he had the urge to swallow all his fear and put himself out there.

He came close the night Sookie went on her first date with Jackson, the produce man who would eventually become her husband. Apparently, it had been the double date from hell—Sookie with Jackson, Lorelai with Jackson's cousin, this scrawny little guy with a weird hat. According to Lorelai, the cousin, whose name was Rune or something, didn't like her because she was too tall. Luke couldn't believe that. He could not for the life of him imagine not finding Lorelai attractive. He looked at her, all dressed up in her date clothes, and was struck all over again by how beautiful she was. She was so colorful, so bursting with _life_! And this idiot, this Rune guy, was walking away from her without a second thought. Luke knew he couldn't just sit there and let her get walked out on and then sit at a table alone, all in one night. So he gave her his best coffee, with the nutmeg, and dealt out a poker hand.

She was so cute. She wasn't just beautiful, she was _cute_, too, and that was a quality that most people didn't still have at age thirty-two. It was strange that she'd had to grow up so fast after she'd gotten pregnant, and yet the child inside of her had refused to die. She had that adorable, teenage-stubborn look on her face when she gave up four of her poker cards at once. And then the two of them glanced over at Sookie and Jackson, who were alone at their own little table, basking in the newness of their relationship and the promises it held. He saw it and he wanted it for himself, and he could see in her eyes that she did, too. And he almost asked…almost. If he'd just been a little bit quicker, he wouldn't have been interrupted by damn Mrs. Kim, screaming at Lorelai that she didn't know where Rory and Lane were, which forced Lorelai to leave. Damn Stars Hollow. People were always interrupting you. And the next time he saw Lorelai, of course he lost his nerve and only suggested that they play poker again sometime.

_Are you nuts? _he sometimes asked himself, and he wasn't quite sure how to answer. She was such an amazing woman, so unique, and if he didn't ask her out, someone else would, and then he wouldn't even have the possibility of a relationship there to cheer him up. But then he remembered that as long as he didn't do anything, he wouldn't lose a friend, the woman on the other side of the counter, the woman who could make up painting songs at the spur of the moment. "_Grab your brush and grab your rollers, all you kids and all you…bowlers, we're going painting today_!"she sang one day, jangling spoons. He did his best not to show it, but that was endearing enough to make him reconsider about painting the diner. At the very least he'd get to spend time with her.

He really didn't want to paint the diner. It was change, but it was worse than regular change—it was changing something that reminded him of his father. It amazed him that night when he opened up and started to talk about his father to Lorelai. He was letting her see the side of him he never let anyone else see. She remarked somewhat sadly that it must be nice for him to be so connected to his dad, and he reminded her that she had that with Rory. He'd never had a real desire for kids, but sometimes he had this wish to be to someone else what his father had been to him, what Lorelai was to Rory. He showed Lorelai the spot on the counter where his father had taken down that order, the day before Luke's life started to change, and she said they should leave that spot alone when they painted the diner. And right then he loved her more than he ever had. She did understand. The two of them sat there on the floor behind the counter, and he wanted to kiss her so badly. But of course he didn't.

He thought his chance had come that night, when Lorelai called him and asked her to come over to her house to find a baby chick that was loose. He thought that could only mean one thing. Why the hell would she have a chick loose in the house? But of course she actually _did_. Rory's science project had escaped and Lorelai could hear it but not see it. He'd always be the man she could count on to help her find baby chicks, but not the man she could count on for sex.

That man, apparently, was Christopher, Rory's father, who just breezed into town one day with no warning. He was a good-looking man, that Christopher. The whole town was talking about him. Luke never got the chance to talk to him, but he would have had a few things to say if he had. It wasn't his place, and he knew that much of Christopher's lack of involvement in the Gilmores' lives was Lorelai's choice, but it was still beyond his comprehension how the man could have no contact with his only daughter beyond a weekly phone call and visits on holidays. Without having spoken a word to Christopher, Luke knew he didn't like him.

That dislike only grew when Lorelai stood him up for their painting date. He knew why. He suddenly felt none of that love for her that he'd felt in that moment the two of them had shared behind the counter. How could she have done that to him? How could she have been so inconsiderate? But of course he ended up forgiving her when she went into the diner alone and painted it. You couldn't stay mad at someone with a smile like that.

It was like some sick joke when she came into the diner wearing Rachel's sweatshirt that she'd bought at the rummage sale. Luke hated getting rid of things, but he had no reason to keep Rachel's shirt anymore, so he donated it. It was best to move on, he thought, and getting rid of the shirt she'd left behind would mean that, once and for all, he was finally over Rachel.

And then there it was, right in front of him, on the new object of his affection. He knew it was totally irrational, but he ended up yelling at her in the middle of the diner, even though she had no way of knowing where the shirt had come from.

Then, just a few weeks after Lorelai had returned the sweatshirt to him, who should waltz back into the diner but the sweatshirt's original owner herself. Rachel was as beautiful as ever, and as impulsive—she'd just spontaneously hopped on a plane to Hartford after seeing that one was leaving out of O'Hare. He'd imagined that moment so many times in the past, Rachel coming back because she realized she missed him and wanted to be with him again. In all of those fantasies, he had fallen in love with her all over again and the two of them had lived happily ever after. But amazingly, he felt none of that when she came back into town. More than anything, he felt annoyed. He'd stopped believing that he could depend on Rachel, the woman who had skipped town more times than he could count without much warning. The time he and Rachel had spent apart had served to harden him, and he approached her now with guarded cynicism. He wasn't going to get hurt again. But deep down, he knew that there was more to it than that. He just didn't feel in love with her anymore. He couldn't figure it out. Rachel hadn't changed a bit. She was the same gorgeous, adventurous, fascinating woman with the amazing eyes, the same woman he'd fallen in love with five years ago. He guessed he was the one who had changed.

It kind of bugged him, too, how Rachel had taken to spending time with Lorelai. He knew she had that talent for seeing people, but this time it was like she was a mind reader. She found that abandoned inn, the Dragonfly, and showed the pictures to Lorelai before she even knew that Lorelai wanted to open her own inn. Next thing he knew, Rachel and Lorelai were going off to look at the Dragonfly together and he was finding Lorelai up in his apartment because Rachel had taken her there. And then it was Lorelai who was telling him to trust Rachel, that this time she meant it, that this time she really did want to stay. For some reason, that was when he chose to believe it. Maybe it was the fact that Rachel cared enough to tell Lorelai, probably knowing that she would tell him. Or maybe it was the fact that Lorelai was telling him at all, and he realized that he probably had a better chance with Rachel, whom he had loved once and who might still love him, than with Lorelai, who apparently wouldn't mind seeing him with Rachel. So he figured, _What__ the hell_, and decided to give it another try with Rachel.

That try pretty much failed. However he looked at it, Rachel was disrupting his routine. For years now, he'd enjoyed the privacy of waking up alone. It was just odd to be waking up next to someone again, someone he was no longer in love with. And it was worse to be expected, to be depended on by someone he didn't love. He had the people of Stars Hollow depending on him to always be there with coffee and food—and of course that included Lorelai. But the town of Stars Hollow had kind of become his new family, and of course family expected things of you. Rachel wasn't family. He didn't know where she fit into his life.

But damn her and her incredible vision. The next thing he knew, her bags were packed—and not because she wanted to be somewhere else, but because she could see what he was really feeling. She knew how he felt about Lorelai. She'd seen it right away, and she'd even gotten a picture of the two of them on a bench at the Firelight Festival that captured it perfectly. He'd had to stare at that picture, thinking, _God, is that how I always look when I look at her?_

So Rachel left for the last time, and she told him before she left, "_Don't wait too long to tell her_."

But apparently he already had.

Before he could act on his feelings, or do anything, she was engaged to some guy named Max.

Max. _Max_. He didn't like that name. And he was pretty sure he didn't like Max, either. He went over to Lorelai's to pick up his toolbox, and maybe, just maybe, to finally tell her like Rachel wanted him to. But Lorelai was all dolled up for a date with Max. Rory's English teacher, he later learned. Max was eyeing Luke suspiciously, so he couldn't resist getting in some little digs about how he did things around the house for Lorelai. And that Max dug right back at him.

And they got engaged. Of course they got engaged. Because Max loved Lorelai—why wouldn't he love Lorelai? Luke could certainly understand that. And Lorelai probably loved him, too. Hey, why not? Max was attractive, articulate, well-read, clean-shaven. He was the anti-Luke. So of course Lorelai loved him.

Stars Hollow went nuts, of course, because everyone loved Lorelai and everyone wanted to see her happy. And, as he felt his heart slowly breaking, he realized that he did, too. And she had seemed very happy the day she'd seen her about to leave for a date with Max, and even happier the day that she had come in to the diner glowing, dying to meet Rory because she had some important news that she had to tell Rory first, handing Luke a yellow daisy. He later learned that there had been 999 other yellow daisies, all part of Max's proposal. God, he was good, that Max. Very slick. Women can never resist flowers—of course she said yes. Of course that made her happier than anything Luke could ever come up with. A thousand yellow daisies. How much money would that have cost?

But Luke did want to give her a nice wedding gift. Well, not nice—something she really loved would have to be more than nice. And that was what he wanted to give her—something she'd love. If she didn't love him, she could at least love his gift.

He tried to think of what he could get her. He couldn't get her a normal wedding gift—she already had a house and everything that people with houses normally had. And what was a normal wedding gift, anyway? Luke hadn't been to a wedding in ages. Toasters, he thought he remembered. Blenders. Dishes. If Lorelai didn't already have all that stuff, she wouldn't use it once she did. Something expensive? Crystal or china? It would be a waste of money, and she'd probably get sick of it right away. Soon she'd have her new husband to buy her flowers and fix things around the house. What should he get her, then? Should he _make_ something? What on Earth could he make? Luke was not a creative person, but, he realized, he could build things. He'd learned some carpentry from his father. But what the hell could he build her? A table? A chair? No, her house was cluttered enough already. Something wedding-related, then?

And then he thought of the chupah. Of course. He'd build her a chupah, and he'd build her a damn fine one. He used a picture as his model, and carved it so that the wood spiraled up from the base, and birds and flowers and animals adorned the posts. Luke was very hard on himself, but when he was finished, even he had to admit that it was beautiful. When he brought it over to her house, she thanked him, and as the two of them stood under it, he felt a lump in his throat. He wished so badly that he could be the one standing there when it really counted.

And then it was over. Just like that. He was in the diner when he heard. The wedding was off, and Lorelai and Rory had left town for awhile. He wanted to throw out his arms and shout, or to walk around grinning like an idiot. Instead, he just gave everyone free coffee. Lorelai didn't love Max after all. She wasn't getting married, and nothing else mattered.

He'd barely had time to rejoice over that piece of news, though, when he got a phone call from Liz one morning at the diner.

"Hey," she said. "I got a real big favor to ask you. Are you working now?"

"_Yeah, I'm working. What do you think I'm doing_?" he asked warily. Liz's life was as chaotic as always. Her third marriage had dissolved when the guy had been arrested for dealing drugs, and when she'd started dating a man who seemed to be a decent human being and genuinely to care about her, the poor guy dropped dead of an aneurysm. But Liz hated being single, so a new loser was probably on the way.

"Luke, I…I can't deal with Jess right now. Things are just so crazy right now, I mean, with Alan dying, and I'm going through AA, and Jess has been getting into trouble lately and I just don't know how to help him."

"_Uh-huh_…"

Liz was starting to sniffle. "He was supposed to go to summer school but he skipped it so much he almost failed…he comes home late all the time and I don't know where he's been…and he was arrested for minor in possession, and I'm so scared that I've been rubbing off on him, you know?"

"_Uh-huh_…"

"And I…I thought maybe you could help, so I thought… "

"_Oh, man, what did you do_?"

"I'm sending Jess up to your place for awhile, if you don't mind," she said, as casually as if she was saying, "I'm sending you some flowers."

"_Excuse me, are you serious? Just like that, huh_?"

"Well, you know, I've got my job, my meetings to go to, and you could probably do a better job with him than I could."

"Oh, Jesus Christ, Liz! So it's not enough that you send a teenage kid to live with me indefinitely, but I'm supposed to straighten him out and turn him into a fine, upstanding citizen when you're the one who messed him up?" That was a little harsh, and maybe not even completely true, but he felt it when he said it.

"Luke—"

"You never change, do you? You haven't changed a bit since you were eighteen and bailed on us when Dad was dying! When things get too tough, you just get rid of whatever the problem is and move on with your own life! Are you _ever_ going to grow up?"

"Luke—"

"_This is unbelievable_!" He was yelling now in the middle of the diner. "_You won't ever change, will you_?"

"That's not why I'm doing this, Luke!" she cried. "I'm doing this because I _love_ him! I can't bear to see him end up like me! And I need to get things together before I can do anything to help him."

Luke sighed and closed his eyes. "_Okay, fine_," he said. "_Do what you want, make the arrangements. Now I'm working, we'll finish this later_."

And so Jess arrived on a bus. Luke hadn't seen him in a long time, and he was struck by how much Jess looked like his late grandfather. They'd noticed it when he was born, but the resemblance was still there, seventeen years later. But Jess also had something of Liz in him, something like a mix of Liz at two different points in her life. He had the fuck-what-you-think, rebel-without-a-cause attitude that Liz had had as a teenager, but the sullen indifference of the younger Liz who had existed between Sheila's death and Carrie's advent. It wasn't until Jess actually arrived that it fully hit Luke that he really didn't know what he was doing. He couldn't even _talk _to the kid, for Christ's sake! And then there was Lorelai, who had said she'd help him out, telling him that Jess was way more screwed up than Luke thought he was. For some reason, that really pushed Luke over the edge. It was one thing to think you were doing everything wrong, and something completely different for it to be confirmed by someone who actually knew what she was talking about. The next thing he knew, he was making some comment to Lorelai about getting pregnant at sixteen, which was probably the most asshole thing he'd ever said to her.

Then the next day he was getting calls from Taylor saying that Jess was stealing from the fund-raising cup, and he was so frustrated he was pushing Jess off a bridge. He couldn't quite believe it when he was standing there looking at his nephew, dripping wet in the middle of the lake. This was bad. One day with Jess and already he'd lost it. He knew then that it was time to apologize to Lorelai.

He was actually thinking of Jess when he talked about kids having jam hands. He remembered Liz and Jess coming to visit once when Jess was about five or so, and after they left the whole apartment was sticky. Jess was past the jam hands phase now, but now he was into stealing lawn gnomes and change, not to mention drawing chalk outlines that the townspeople called "phony murder." Luke had to laugh at that. At first he'd only seen teenage Liz in Jess, but his nephew was more like him than Luke had originally thought. He was remembering what he had done to the gazebo as a kid. Jess' prank was a lot more original and funny and a lot less destructive, but even so, the people of Stars Hollow were ready to run both Luke and Jess out of town. Luke thought he'd never have that much to say at a town meeting, but there he was, defending not only Jess but himself, too.

But Jess was not a bad kid, Luke slowly realized. Angry, yes. Selfish, yes. Lazy, definitely. Jess had definitely disrupted his routine, but Luke was developing a new one that included Jess. He started to get used to having the kid around, and gradually he started to think that maybe the time he spent with Jess could be like a second chance for Liz. His sister's life was continually screwed up, and here was his chance to make sure that Jess' wasn't, too.

And still, there was Lorelai.

It was so strange that this woman whom he thought he understood so well, whom he'd been able to explain her own feelings to, who blurted out whatever she was thinking whenever she was thinking it, could still be so much of an enigma to him. There were times when he thought she did feel that way about him, like when he built the runway for the fashion show at Rory's school and someone's mother started talking to him, asking him for directions. Lorelai reacted so strangely to something that hadn't even been flirting. "_Go ahead! Date her! Marry her! Make her Mrs. Backwards Baseball Hat!" _she'd yelled before storming out of the diner. Luke had to laugh at that. She was jealous—how else could you explain her acting that way?

But then she went on a date someone from her business class who was at least ten years younger than her, who brought his mommy and daddy to the diner to take a look around, and for some reason, that infuriated Luke. Would she really rather date anyone—_anyone_—than Luke? It certainly seemed that way.

And then she was sitting there at the counter, telling him that actually, she really wasn't very good at dating, because it was too uncertain, and she liked things she could count on. There weren't many things in her life that she could be sure of, she said, not too many people who would always be there for her no matter what, but along with Rory and Sookie and Stars Hollow, he was one of them—wasn't he? And he had to agree that he was. No matter how fed up or angry he got with Lorelai, he would never stop caring about her. He'd always be there.

Hey, she was there for him, too. When his Uncle Louie died, he couldn't believe it when nobody would help him. Not Liz, not any of his cousins. Luke had disliked his uncle as much as anyone else, but that had nothing to do with whether or not he'd take care of the funeral arrangements. Louie was _family_, and you did whatever you could for family, no matter what you thought of them. It was such a simple concept. Why couldn't anyone else understand it?

But Lorelai did. When he told her about it, she did everything she could—helped at the diner, helped with the coffin, even got the war re-enactors to come. But it was more than that. When he was losing it, she could be his voice of reason. When he was ready to give up on the whole thing, because Louie was a selfish asshole even in death, she was there reminding him that he was doing this not for Louie, but for his dad. Luke's father, she said, was up in heaven watching him, and smiling. That was an image that never failed to comfort Luke, and he calmed down.

Then, when the two of them were standing with the minister beside Louie's grave, the uneasy feeling he'd had since he'd talked to Taylor started to grow. He remembered his father's funeral, and how he'd been awed at the number of people who had come and told him what a good man his father was. And then there was Louie, whose own family wouldn't even show up for his funeral. Taylor had told Luke that he was like Louie: a loner who had never married and was only getting crankier over the years. Would no one come to his funeral, either? Lorelai said no. She asked if Louie would ever build someone a chupah, or fix things around other people's houses without being asked, or bake a coffee cake and blow up balloons for a girl's sixteenth birthday like he'd done for Rory, or raise his nephew without a second thought, asking for nothing in return. When she put it that way, he didn't sound like such a bad guy. And Luke realized, as they stood there, that those were all things his father would have done.

When they got back to the diner, the whole town was there, having a kind of impromptu wake for Louie. They had all hated Louie as much as anyone else—they were just there for Luke. "_People like you_," Lorelai told him, and he felt a lump in his throat. He hadn't felt so loved in a long time, and it made him love Lorelai even more, because she made him love himself.

Of course, it was hard to remember why when she was screaming at him to go to hell. His heart stopped when she told him that Rory and Jess had been in an accident. Jess had crashed Rory's car, and Rory had fractured her wrist. The two kids he loved the most in this world had been in a car wreck, he had no idea where his nephew was or if he was even okay, and Lorelai was screaming at him that it was all his fault. A week before she'd said he was a great guy for taking in his sister's kid when there was nothing in it for him, and now he was the bad guy for not sending Jess back to New York. There was so much information to process right then—car accident, Rory hurt, Jess missing—and all Lorelai could do was guilt-trip him, as if he wasn't upset enough. He needed to go away, he needed to go find Jess, he needed to get away from Lorelai. They screamed at each other to go to hell, and he went off, his heart thumping with fear.

He found him sitting on the bridge, the same bridge he'd pushed Jess off of when Jess had first moved in. Jess no longer looked like the sullen teenager he'd taken in months ago who had stolen and offended practically everybody. He looked so young, and small, and scared, and alone. "_I made sure she was all right,_" Jess said, and Luke could hear the sorrow and fear and regret in his nephew's voice.

Luke felt his heart swell, and right then he loved Jess more than he ever had. "_I know you did_," he said. Suddenly he was angrier at Lorelai than he'd ever imagined he could be. How dare she accuse him of not caring? He wanted what was best for his kid the same way she wanted what was best for hers. And what was best for Jess included him passing high school, which would be a hell of a lot easier with help from someone like Rory.

_But it's all about her, as usual,_ he thought angrily as Jess stood up and he put his arm around his nephew's shoulder. Jess didn't move away. The two of them walked back to the diner in silence as he continued silently fuming. Damn it, she'd never even gotten to _know_ Jess! He hadn't hurt Rory on purpose, and if she'd seen him tonight, she would have believed him when he said he'd made sure Rory was all right. Luke had seen Jess lie, and he wasn't lying then. And didn't Lorelai know him well enough to know that he would never even consider doing anything that didn't have both Jess and Rory's best interests at heart? Or that family was the most important thing to him and there was no way in hell that he would give up on his nephew at the first sign of trouble? Hadn't they had that conversation about family before? How could she say those things to him? She knew how much it hurt him. She had to have known.

Once they were back at the diner, Jess said, "I want to leave. Now."

Luke blinked. "Tonight? Just like that?"

"Yeah," Jess muttered, not meeting his uncle's eyes. "I want to get out of here."

Luke frankly didn't blame him. Jess was bound to run into Lorelai at some point, and then there would be trouble. Worse, Jess was bound to run into _Dean_. "All right," said Luke. "I'll put you on the next bus. I'll call your mother to let her know you're coming."

Jess put a bag together with all his essential things. "You can send the rest later," he mumbled, and he was gone.

The whole thing was dizzying—way too much to deal with at once. So Luke closed the diner and drove up to that lake in New Hampshire he'd gone with his father years ago. He needed to get away, do some fishing, be alone—anything to get his mind off things.

The first person he saw when he got back was Rory, sporting a cast on her wrist. Thankfully, she didn't seem to be mad at him like her mom was. As he served her food in the empty diner, she whispered to him, "_It wasn't his fault_." He knew.

He never did get around to sending Jess' stuff back to New York. He supposed he'd gotten used to it, and it was easier to keep it and pretend everything was still the same than to send it back and acknowledge that it wasn't. It didn't matter, because Jess was back to stay barely two weeks after the accident.

But sometime during those two weeks, Luke noticed one of the books Jess had left behind sitting in the bathroom. The spine read _Legends of the Rhine_. Luke absently flipped through some pages and would have stopped, but one page, a familiar name jumped out at him.

It was spelled slightly differently, but the name was the same. He read a legend about a water nymph, a siren, called Lore who would sit on a rock in the Rhine called the Lei. The nymph, therefore, was also called the Lorelei, and she would "lure boatmen to destruction in a furious rapid which marred the channel at that spot. She so bewitched them with her plaintive songs and her wonderful beauty that they forgot everything else to gaze up at her, and so they presently drifted among the broken reefs and were lost."

That sounded familiar, although he'd heard her sing, and people were more likely to run from the room in terror when she sang than to forget everything else to listen to her.

He read on: "In those old, old times, the Count Bruno lived in a great castle near there with his son, the Count Hermann. A youth of twenty, Hermann had heard a great deal about the beautiful Lore, and had finally fallen very deeply in love with her without having seen her. So he used to wander the neighborhood of the Lei, evenings, with his zither," (What the hell was a zither? Luke wondered), "…and express his longing in low singing. On one of these occasions, suddenly there hovered around the top of the rock a brightness of unequaled clearness and color, which, in increasingly smaller circles thickened, was the enchanting figure of the beautiful lore. After that he was a changed person. He went dreaming about, thinking only of his fairy and caring for naught else in the world."

_Oh, God_. Luke couldn't help but read on about how one night Hermann had gone in his boat with his faithful squire to sing a song to the Lorelei, who was moved by the song and tried to save him. But alas, "the boat was upset, mocking every exertion; the waves rose to the gunwale, and splitting on the hard stones, the boat broke into pieces. The youth sank into the depths, but the squire was thrown on shore by a powerful wave."

Luke let out a bitter laugh as he closed the book. He'd always thought her name was unusual. How fitting that she was named for a mythical creature who lured those who loved her to a violent, painful death.

He had forgotten, though, about the end of the legend, the part that said, "The bitterest things have been said about the Lorelei during many centuries, but surely her conduct upon this occasion entitles her to our respect. One feels drawn tenderly toward her and is moved to forget her many crimes and remember only the good deed that crowned and closed her career."

And thus, she came back one day when the diner was closed. She didn't want to make up, she said, she'd just had a really crappy night and needed a cup of coffee. He could just pretend she was a new customer, Mimi. And despite his anger, he let her have the coffee. He knew the look on her face, and he knew she needed the coffee badly.

Then she started to talk, and he knew why. Her heart was broken. For all these years, through all the different relationships she'd had, she'd always had Christopher in the back of her mind, and the hope that he could just get his life together and the two of them and Rory could be a mommy, a daddy, and a baby girl, just like they had been meant to. But this time she'd thought she had found what she'd always wanted—love, comfort and safety. And she had been wrong. Apparently Christopher had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, and she, not Lorelai, would be the one getting the love, comfort, and safety. He would be there for his girlfriend and his new baby all the way when he had never been there for Lorelai and Rory. And then Lorelai told him what he already knew—as much as she loved her independence, as much as she considered herself lucky to have what she had in her life, she really wanted someone who would be there for her through the years, unconditionally. Someone who'd be there at the end of the day.

_You already have that_, Luke said silently as he pushed a doughnut on a plate down the counter toward her. Damn it, why was she so hard to stay mad at? His love for her was back, and it wasn't going away.

Then the town had a dance marathon. Having raised money for the bridge, they now needed money for a tarp to cover the bridge. Honestly, sometimes Luke thought Taylor was just looking for any excuse to be in charge of something. Sookie and Jackson were married now, and at the dance marathon, they started arguing, because Jackson wanted four kids in four years or something and Sookie didn't. In front of Lorelai, Luke said a few less-than-positive things about having kids and then started to think better of it. He'd come a long way since he'd made the jam hands comment, and now he thought that having kids might not be so bad. He was used to having Jess around by now, and in spite of himself had grown quite fond of the kid. And, of course, on the other end of the spectrum was Rory, whom he had felt very paternal toward ever since the day he'd pulled her from the path of the car. He would love to have kids like Rory, and, as he told Lorelai later as he helped her fix her shoe, he would love to have kids if it was with the right woman. He just left out the part about who that right woman was.

And then the dance marathon was over and the next thing he knew, Rory and Jess were dating. He couldn't believe it. He wasn't stupid, and he could certainly tell that Jess had a thing for Rory, but he'd never thought that the feeling was mutual. Apparently Dean had picked up on what Rory was feeling and had broken up with her right there on the dance floor. Jess had broken up with that blonde girl from the hairdresser's whom he'd stuffed into a closet once, and now he and Rory were an item.

It was the weirdest thing for Luke. When Rory had been with Dean, he'd gotten used to hating him, and after Rory and Dean had broken up the first time, Luke had ended up wrestling with Dean outside the diner because he wouldn't let Dean in. But Jess was his nephew, and Luke was his guardian, and thus while Luke couldn't hate him for dating Rory, he could lay down a set of rules about when Jess would have Rory home and what he could and could not do with her. Jess had actually had to remind him, "_You're my guardian, not hers_."

His nephew was dating Lorelai's daughter. And he knew exactly what Lorelai still thought of Jess. That and the fact that Lorelai was seeing some guy named Alex who liked to go fishing made him think that maybe he should move on, try to find someone new. He hadn't had a serious girlfriend since Rachel, and maybe it was time to try again.

Taylor was putting in that damn soda shoppe next to the diner, and then one day he was approached for a signature by Taylor's pretty, red-headed lawyer, Nicole Leahy. According to Jess, Nicole had been flirting with him, and so Luke got up his courage and asked Nicole out. He couldn't believe it once he had. He _never_ asked women out, and Nicole was so different from the people he interacted with normally. She lived in New York, wore suits, had manicured fingernails, took bubble baths. She was a lawyer, for Pete's sake, and Luke hated lawyers. And as if that wasn't bad enough, she worked for Taylor.

But he did like Nicole. She was a nice person with an easy way of speaking, and she was positive and accepting and made him feel comfortable. Luke was nervous on their first date, and ended up babbling, telling her a story about Lorelai accidentally hitting Taylor in the face with a French fry. He was red-faced by the time he finished the story and thought he'd totally blown his chances. But Nicole just laughed gently, and then he started to relax.

He opened up more than he'd expected to on that first date. He told Nicole all about his parents, Liz, Jess. Nicole got to meet Jess when Luke brought her back to the diner after their first date, and Jess tried to leave, with a smirk on his face, insinuating something not-so-subtly. Luke grew very annoyed at that, probably more annoyed than he should have been, and he ended up yelling at Jess outside and smacking him upside the head. This was his first date in a long time, and Jess was making it look like all he wanted was sex. But nothing seemed to deter Nicole. It was amazing. For the first time in years, Luke had a girlfriend.

But there was a problem. Nicole had met Lorelai right before the first date, and she knew who Lorelai was. Lorelai had been outraged when he'd let Nicole take a cell phone call inside the diner, and had gotten into a silent fight with him, but what was he going to do, kick her outside on the first date? But then, in addition to the French fry story, he'd ended up talking about Lorelai and coffee, and now Nicole looked at him suspiciously whenever he mentioned Lorelai. He couldn't really blame her. Even though Nicole was a nice person and a great girlfriend, his feelings for Lorelai weren't any less strong than before.

In the spring of 2003, all kinds of bad things started happening. First, there was the Independence Inn catching on fire. It was still standing, but there was plenty of damage, and Lorelai's life was in chaos. Things weren't going well with Rory and Jess. He couldn't tell exactly what the problem was, and Jess would never tell him, but Luke knew that their relationship wasn't exactly all candlelight and flowers. Jess had apparently been skipping school to work at Wal-Mart, and that news so distracted Luke that he completely blew it when he met Nicole's parents, and ended up babbling nonsense to them. Luke was getting phone calls at five in the morning from an irate parent whose house Jess had trashed, and in the middle of all this, Fran Weston, the sweet old lady who owned the bakery and the old Dragonfly Inn, died.

Apparently Rory and Jess had gone to a party at some kid named Kyle's house, and Jess and Dean had gotten into a fight over Rory. Luke had gotten a very angry phone call before the crack of dawn from Kyle's father, complaining about the damage Jess had done to his property. Luke set his teeth and fought the urge to strangle Jess when he talked to him about it.

But it got worse. First, there was Jimmy Mariano showing up one day out of the clear blue sky. And then, the news that Jess had missed too much school to graduate from high school. Luke couldn't believe it. He was angrier at himself than he was at Jess. How could he have missed this? How could he have let this happen? Jess was an intelligent kid. Liz had been extremely smart at his age, too, despite what her grades said. When Liz had taken aptitude tests, she had always been way above average. Jess was even smarter than Liz had been, but at least Liz had graduated.

Luke didn't want to see Jess fail, though, and on a more selfish level, he really didn't want his nephew to leave. So he offered Jess one more year that he could stay, another opportunity to graduate high school. Jess refused. And so, because he knew it was right, even though it hurt him so badly inside that he could feel physical pain, Luke said it: "_Then you gotta go._"

He'd intended at least to say goodbye, to help Jess figure out what he was going to do on his own, but before he could do anything about it, Jess was unceremoniously gone. Jess hadn't said goodbye to him, or to Rory, or anyone. He'd just gotten up and left. He hadn't told Luke where, but Luke had a pretty good idea that a certain long-lost father was a factor in Jess's choice of destination.

He told Lorelai first, because he wanted this news to cause Rory as little pain as possible. The poor girl had finals and her own graduation to worry about, and he didn't want to interfere with that. The fact that Jess had hurt Rory so much angered him more than anything. Maybe he'd spent too much time trying to keep Jess from turning out like his mother. Instead, he'd turned out like his father—an abandoner.

However he looked at it, Luke had failed. He'd spent two years trying to help his nephew out, to absolutely no avail. Jess was right back at the place he'd been in before his mother had sent him to Stars Hollow.

And aside from that, despite what he told Lorelai, Luke really did miss Jess once he was gone. One day he went up to his apartment, found it empty, and realized that it was going to be empty like that from now on. When everything began to sink in, Luke went over to his bed and cried like he hadn't cried in years.

He was crying again a week later, for an entirely different reason.

Rory was graduating from Chilton, and she and Lorelai wanted him there. It was just Lorelai, Lorelai's parents, Sookie, Jackson, and him. Christopher wasn't even there, which only increased Luke's dislike for this man he'd never even met tenfold. What kind of man didn't go to his own daughter's graduation? Where she was the freaking _valedictorian_?

In April, Rory had found out that she'd been accepted to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and Luke had been amazed and proud. Rory was such a great kid who worked so hard, and she deserved those acceptances more than anyone in the world. Luke had awkwardly tried to hug her, and hadn't quite succeeded.

That feeling came all over again at her graduation. His beautiful little girl had grown up so well. It amazed him that he attached a possessive pronoun there. He had absolutely no claim to Rory through blood or marriage, and he'd had nothing to do with raising her. But he'd known this young woman whom he would always think of as a little girl for ten years, and he did love her like a daughter. He felt the lump in his throat start to grow when Rory began to make her speech, and by the time Rory thanked her mother for everything she'd done for her, he was crying outwardly and unapologetically.

When the graduation was over, he hugged Rory, and Lorelai thanked him for coming. In a few days, he and Nicole would be headed off on a cruise, and Lorelai had seemed to think it was a good idea. She confirmed this when he brought it up again at graduation, and Luke began to accept the idea that he and Lorelai were never meant to be. He might as well try to make things work with Nicole.

But then, like a warning, he had a dream that night. Lorelai walked up to him and said, "_Don't get engaged_." Luke woke up sweating and breathing hard, trying to figure out what the hell he had just dreamt. Don't get engaged? He hadn't been planning on getting engaged. Nicole was a good girlfriend, a nice little addition to his life, but he couldn't imagine being married to her. Even though he'd had no plans to propose, and even though he'd never been inclined to trust his subconscious before, he decided to take the dream Lorelai's advice.

Later, when he thought about it, he supposed he really _had_ taken her advice. He didn't get engaged. He got married.

He and Nicole were on that cruise, and except for a few times they got stuck listening to this guy playing drinking glasses, it was wonderful at first. But then Luke started to notice that everyone around them was either in love, engaged, or married for a long time. He grew even more uncomfortable after he and Nicole spent time with another couple whom they'd met, and they assumed that Luke and Nicole were married. He started to rethink things. Maybe Nicole was as good as it would get. He didn't love her, didn't feel anything like what he felt towards Lorelai about her, but she was nice and friendly and could carry on a decent conversation. And, according to what she said after they danced with several other couples on the boat deck, she loved him, at least after a few glasses of champagne. Luke had had a few himself, and when he reflected on it later, it was probably that, and his rethinking, and the fact that Lorelai seemed to have no problem with him and Nicole being together, and the fact that he'd been upset since Jess left and needed something new in his life that made him propose. Nicole accepted, and the captain married them as several other couples stood around and watched.

But the next day, he woke up and thought, _What__ the hell? _Who did he think he was—Liz? This was the kind of thing she would do—marry a not-so-serious significant other on the spur of the moment without giving a thought to the consequences. They had only been dating for a few months, and they hadn't talked about anything practical—where they'd live, whether they wanted kids, whether they'd keep the same jobs. Luke was so embarrassed by the whole thing that he really didn't want to see or to talk to Nicole. He suggested snorkeling the next day, which allowed them not to talk much, and then they decided to continue with that trend by not talking for the entire rest of the cruise. By the time they got off the ship, they'd decided to divorce.

But Nicole sending the lawyers from her firm down to the diner to make sure he didn't cheat her out of anything—as if he would—wasn't the only thing he had on his mind that fall.

Everybody had something new in their lives. Lorelai and Sookie were restoring the Dragonfly, furthering their goal of owning their own inn. Rory went off to Yale, which was strange. It had been weird when Lorelai and Rory went off to Europe after Rory's graduation, and he'd had to get used to not seeing them there in the diner anymore. But then it was a whole different kind of weird when it was just Lorelai. He'd gotten used to thinking of the Gilmores as a unit when they were in his diner. It completely threw him off to only have Lorelai there, and, as he admitted when he was being honest with himself, he just missed Rory. He'd lost Jess already, and now he'd lost the other kid he loved. At least she was back sometimes on weekends.

One of the weekends she was back was when something really strange happened. He'd heard, of course, that Rory's ex-boyfriend Dean was getting married, which was strange enough in itself. Nineteen years old and they were getting married—and the girl wasn't even pregnant, as far as Luke knew. Dean was going to college—at Luke's alma mater, according to what he'd heard—and he was getting married. Luke couldn't even imagine being married at nineteen. Liz had done it, but, well, she was Liz.

And then, all of a sudden, Dean's quite pathetic bachelor party was headed into the diner, and an extremely drunk Dean was slumped over the counter, moaning Rory's name. Luke was the only one who heard it, and the name immediately set him on the defensive. All Luke knew was that he had to get those kids out of there before they heard Dean, too. News spread fast in Stars Hollow, and he wanted to be absolutely sure that he would be the only person ever to know that Dean had just spoken Rory's name.

Dean kept talking after Luke dragged him up to the apartment. He talked about how smart Rory was, how he thought she could fix the world, and he wondered why she didn't love him. Luke felt a pang as he laid Dean down on his bed. He sympathized with this kid whom he had never liked. Dean, like Luke, had settled, had married the first nice girl who came along, all while being in love with someone else, while being enticed by the siren song of a Lorelai.

Luke pondered what to do about Dean all that night. He knew Dean probably wouldn't remember what he'd said in the morning. But the next morning was Dean's wedding. Luke's advice to Dean would probably have to be along the lines of "Don't marry one woman when you're in love with another—believe me, I know." But that would mean the wedding, the wedding _that day_, would be called off, and eventually Rory would find out why. Hell, the whole _town _would find out why. It would be a scandal that the Stars Hollow gossips would love, and it wouldn't be pretty. So Luke's only solution was to let Dean go through with it, and just to make sure that Rory didn't go anywhere near that wedding. He wanted to call Lorelai and tell her about it, so that she could be the one to stop Rory from going, since she was better at this sort of thing than he was. But Lorelai was busy with Dragonfly business, so he just had to tell Rory himself. Rory accepted that without question, although she did look a bit confused, but he thought she seemed relieved as well. Maybe she hadn't really wanted to go, after all. Or maybe that was just his wishful thinking.

Funny, though, how Luke didn't take the advice that he would have given Dean. Nicole just came by one day and suggested that they postpone the divorce. They were, after all, the same two people they'd been before they'd gotten married. As Nicole said, getting married had been what had broken them up. And, after all, she had been a good girlfriend. Not to mention that divorce was a pain in the ass. So Luke agreed, and did his best to ignore the conscience that was screaming, "No! You can't stay married to one woman while you're in love with another!"

It was strange, though, starting to think of himself as a married man. Up until then, he'd just thought of himself as soon-to-be-divorced. But slowly, it started to hit him: _I have a wife_. And of course, when he told Lorelai about it, she was upset, and fired back at him with the strangeness of the situation. This time, Luke wasn't even sure if it was because she possibly had feelings for him, too, or if the situation just really was that strange.

It got even stranger after Nicole bought a townhouse in Litchfield and asked him to move in. He hesitated and said, "Sure…" because he didn't really know what else to say. He started spending the night at Nicole's occasionally, but he could never bring himself to actually move in. It just wasn't _home_. He belonged upstairs from the diner, in the apartment that had been his father's office. He couldn't tell himself that he lived anywhere else.

So he told Lorelai instead. And she was upset, indignant, didn't know why he hadn't told her sooner. It was exactly the reaction he'd expected, so he didn't know why it bothered him so much. Maybe it was just the fact that Lorelai being upset mattered at all. What she thought really shouldn't matter so much. Theoretically, his wife should be the only woman whose opinions mattered. But in reality, it wasn't like that at all.

And then one day, out of nowhere, Liz showed up. Liz hadn't come to visit him in years. Apparently it was her high school reunion or something. She did look very happy, but Luke had grown to distrust Liz's happiness. Great new job, great new boyfriend—it was the same old story. In at most a few months, everything would go to hell. It always did with Liz. It amazed him that Liz could be such a smart person, but he could be one of the only people who knew that, seeing as she never learned from her mistakes.

Liz's reappearance reminded him about Jess's car, which, as he'd mentioned to Liz, was hidden in their father's old garage. But when Luke went to check on it, it was gone. He couldn't believe it. Had someone stolen it? Who would steal a piece of crap car like that? And then when the police figured it out, Luke couldn't believe that he hadn't figured it out himself. Of course, Liz had lied, and she had been in contact with Jess, and Jess had come back and stolen the goddamn car. As if Luke didn't have enough to worry about right then, he had to be reminded all over again about his failure with Jess. So when he did talk to Jess it wasn't exactly a happy reunion. He yelled at Jess to stay away from Rory and told him that Jess hadn't been kicked out, he'd gotten himself kicked out. And Jess just proved that he hadn't changed at all. Even after all this time, Jess was still ungrateful and didn't appreciate anything Luke had done for him. Why the hell had Luke spent so much time caring about him? And why the _hell _could nothing ever go right with Jess or with Liz?

He was still angry and frustrated when Lorelai came into the diner that night. She was so different from the bubbly, perky Lorelai who'd come into the diner earlier that day. She was the calm, wise Lorelai, the mother Lorelai, reminding him gently that it was thirty-five degrees out and Jess was sleeping in the car. And he ranted to her about how families were spilled drinks and he was sick of cleaning up the messes they made. The next thing he knew, he was going over to Nicole's for the night and letting Jess have the apartment. And although he said he didn't care if Jess froze to death, of course he found himself driving his truck back to make sure his nephew did get a warm bed to sleep in. Something about that sight, Jess going from that beat-up car he loved so much to the apartment, made him realize that the car really was the only place Jess had now. So he put some money in Jess's car, figuring that Jess could probably use it. It was funny how Lorelai seemed to bring out the best in him.

The next day, though he was right back at why-the-hell-do-I-try-so-hard-with-this-kid. After meeting the latest object of Liz's affection, T.J., a not-so-bright guy with an Etch-a-Sketch, Jess had proceeded to tell Luke, in so many words, that he didn't really help anyone. That he was a pain in the ass, and he just made things worse for everyone by making them feel like they disappointed him. Nothing else Jess said could possibly have made Luke feel as bad as he did then. He wasn't insulting what Luke did; he was insulting who Luke was. What Jess had said hurt him so badly that Luke could think of nothing to do but to revert to his most adolescent instincts and get drunk. And he never got drunk.

And then, going along with more recently acquired instincts, he found himself at the home of the one person who could fix him when he couldn't fix himself. He broke into Lorelai's house and ended up cutting himself on her broken window. As she fixed his hand with Barbie band-aids, he slurred the afternoon's story to her, and Lorelai told him that what Jess had said wasn't true. She said she'd talked to Liz earlier that day, and Liz had told her how much she looked up to Luke. That did make him feel a bit better.

He talked to Liz again later that night, at the Firelight Festival. He'd reconsidered about T.J. Aside from the Etch-a-Sketch and the fact that if he didn't seem to be so crazy about Liz, Luke would have sworn he was gay, T.J. didn't seem half bad, and Luke thought he might even be good for Liz. Liz apologized for Jess, and thanked Luke for what he'd done for him. Jess would be okay, Liz thought. She told Luke she thought Jess was like their father, which in some ways Luke could see. Jess had the same sensitivity beneath a tough exterior that his grandfather had had, and with that, Luke could see how his nephew could be all right. "_Sometimes it just takes awhile for things to sink in,_" Liz said softly. "_It did with me_." Luke looked at his little sister and finally conceded that maybe this time, she really had found happiness. For once, she seemed genuinely together. The Renaissance Faire earrings she made really were nice, and T.J. seemed to care about her very much. Liz handed him a pair of those earrings and said he could give them to his wife— "_Or Lorelai._" So he ended up going with that option. Luke hugged his sister goodbye, feeling better than he had all day, and no longer regretted putting the money in Jess's car.

A week later, he gave money to another person he loved.

Lorelai told him she wanted to take him to dinner at a nice restaurant, which kind of confused Luke. He knew it couldn't be a date—Lorelai knew he was married and he was pretty sure Lorelai was seeing someone, probably that guy who had tailgated Luke and whose fancy car he'd seen her sitting in. But what reason could she have for wanting to see him out like that?

They never made it to the restaurant. Luke ran into a dressed-up Lorelai in the park, and she looked upset. They ended up sitting down on a bench as Lorelai cried, telling him about how everything with the Dragonfly was going wrong, and she hadn't been able to get in contact with Rory lately, and it was one of the few times in her life when she wished she had somebody. At dinner, she'd been about to ask him to lend her $30,000 for the inn. $30,000. It was a lot of money, but he couldn't stand to see Lorelai crying like that, saying that she was failing. He held her tight as he told her that she was _not _failing. And he meant it. Lorelai was such a strong, smart woman who had accomplished so much, and with the Dragonfly would accomplish even more. He would probably never tell her this, because it sounded a bit patronizing, but he was proud of her for it.

But although he loved her independence and capability, it was moments like that one in the park when he loved her the most: the moments where she let her guard down and showed him her weaker side. Those were the moments when he knew she _needed_ him, and it was wonderful to be needed. Those moments made him determined to fix whatever was wrong, to heal whatever hurt she was feeling, to make sure she never cried like that again.

So the next time he saw her, in the diner, he gave her a check for $30,000. She tried to tell him that it was too much, and when he told her not to negotiate about it, she wrote it down on a napkin. He wrote back, figuring out how she could pay him back. Then she wrote back asking what Nicole would think about that, and Luke got annoyed. The truth was that things between him and Nicole were getting worse by the day. He slept in his apartment more than he slept at Nicole's, and Nicole was not very happy about that. They kept having fights about it, and Nicole did not, to put it mildly, react well when he eventually told her about lending the money to Lorelai. That, unfortunately, was a fight that nearly all of Stars Hollow ended up witnessing.

And then one day, Luke woke up at Nicole's place, got dressed, and realized he was wearing another man's socks.

He grew numb, then slowly angry as the implications set in. Nicole was seeing someone else. That wasn't just cheating, it was _adultery_. In his mind, it was unthinkable for two people in a marriage. After all, he may have had feelings for Lorelai, but he would never dream of acting on them as long as he was married to Nicole. Although, given this new turn in events, he acknowledged that that might not be very much longer.

To prove it, he spied on Nicole one night, and watched as she and some guy went up to their townhouse. He'd been trying to make himself feel better with the possibility that there could be some other explanation for the socks, but then he saw the guy.

Luke closed his eyes and just sat there in his truck, neither thinking nor feeling. Then, slowly and calmly, he got up and looked at the sock man's car. The anger he was feeling welled up inside him, and in a rush of fury, he kicked the car. Then he kicked it again. And again. And again. And each kick was for something in his life that he had screwed up. His marriage…Jess…Liz…Lorelai…nothing was going right.

And they certainly weren't going any more right after a policeman came and hauled Luke off to jail. Apparently one of the neighbors had heard him and called the cops.

As he sat there in a jail cell, waiting for Lorelai to get the message he'd left her and to come bail him out, he thought, _This__ is what my life's come to? _Liz had always been the family screw-up, while he'd been the good one. But now here he was, forty-one years old, about to be divorced, cuckolded by his wife, unnoticed by the woman he loved, a failure at parenting, a nuisance who interfered with everybody's lives whether or not they wanted it, and in jail. Luke just closed his eyes and thought, _I have got to change something_.

A self-help tape. A week earlier, Luke would have laughed at anyone who used one of those damn things, and here he was using one himself. And it was the cheesiest thing he could possibly imagine. _"You deserve love_," it was saying. God Almighty.

While he was somewhere in the middle of the tape, Liz and T.J. showed up out of nowhere and told him they were getting married. The wedding would be Renaissance-themed, in a week, and in the town square. Luke had his misgivings about it—it was T.J., after all, and Liz didn't have the best track record—but he opted just to act happy about it. Liz was happy, after all, and that was all that mattered.

But then he found out that Jess wasn't coming to the wedding, and despite how his last meeting with Jess had gone, Luke set his teeth and decided to do something about that.

He drove to Jess's apartment in New York, which looked like a crack house. _God_, Luke thought, _this is what I kicked him out to? _He tried to convince Jess to come to his mother's wedding, but Jess refused. He'd just catch the next one, he said. Luke took a deep breath, and tried to keep his voice calm, but ended up yelling at Jess. He'd been there for Jess when no one else was, and Jess owed him, he told his nephew. As he stormed out, he thought, _Why__ the hell didn't I say that a long time ago? _

Surprisingly, Jess did show up, and just announced to Luke that he was staying with him. Then, when Luke, Jess, T.J.'s brother, and a bunch of other random people were out at T.J's bachelor party, T.J. announced that Liz wanted Jess to walk her down the aisle. Jess refused, T.J. wouldn't back away, and the next thing Luke knew, he and Jess were fighting and getting thrown out of the strip club. Luke couldn't believe it. _Fighting?_ With his own _nephew?_ How old was he? And why the hell did he try so hard with this kid who couldn't get anything through his thick skull?

Back at the diner, Luke attempted to talk to Jess again. It didn't matter, he said. If Jess really hated his mother that much, he was free to do so. Jess sighed, and said he didn't hate his mother, or Luke, either. He'd only come to Stars Hollow because of Luke, he said. That was the closest thing to a compliment Luke had ever gotten from Jess. Luke asked him why he hadn't wanted to come, and Jess was silent. And Luke knew then: _Rory_. He smiled to himself. It looked like he wasn't the only one who needed a self-help tape.

He thought about asking Lorelai to go to the wedding with him, but in the end decided against it. After all, he and Nicole hadn't finished with the divorce papers yet, and then he would technically be cheating, too. When they were officially divorced, though, Luke would have to keep in mind that Lorelai didn't seem to be attached anymore. Maybe she'd finally broken up with that guy.

Luke took his seat at the wedding and bit his lip, trying not to laugh at all the people milling about in Renaissance costumes and to avoid the eyes of Crazy Carrie Duncan, who was Liz's maid of honor. Suddenly, Luke felt a hand on his shoulder. He winced, thinking it was Carrie, but then the person attached to the hand spoke. "Hey, how's it going?" it said.

Luke knew that voice. He looked up and saw her standing there smiling. "Rachel," he gasped.

"Hey, Luke," Rachel smiled.

Luke stood up and gave her a friendly hug. "I didn't know you were coming," he said. "How've you been?"

"Oh, I'm great!" she replied. "How's it going with you?"  
"Oh, pretty good." They stood in awkward silence for a second. Then Luke said, "Here, Rachel, sit down with me."

As they were sitting, Rachel whispered to him, "So did you tell her?"

Luke looked up in surprise. "Boy, didn't take long for you to get to that."

Rachel laughed. "Well, I've been wondering ever since I left. Did you?"

Luke sighed. "Well, right after you left, she got engaged."

Rachel started. "Oh…I'm…"

"But she didn't get married."

"Oh." She sounded bewildered.

"But right now I'm in the middle of a divorce, so…"

"Whoa, whoa, WHOA." Rachel put her hand up. "You got _married_?"

"Yes."

"To someone _else_?"

"Her name is Nicole. She's a lawyer in New York."

Rachel laughed disbelievingly. "Luke, you _hate_ lawyers!"

"Don't remind me," he grumbled.

"You'd rather marry a lawyer than tell her how you feel?"

Luke had been getting annoyed. He didn't want to be reminded of his own failure with his love life at his sister's wedding. But when Rachel put it that way, he actually had to laugh. "God, I'm an idiot," he said.

"Ah, don't be too hard on yourself," Rachel said. "The guy I'm seeing right now had a thing for me for over a year before he did anything about it."

Luke raised his eyebrows. "You're seeing someone now?"

"For almost two years."

"How'd you meet him?"

"Well, I still do a lot of traveling, but my home base right now is Chicago," she said. "He lived in the apartment next door to me. Apparently he had a thing for me from day one…but he didn't ask me out for about a year, and now here we are." She smiled. "It's too bad he waited, though. I would have said yes if he'd asked earlier."

Luke smiled. "I need to finish getting divorced, Rachel. Then we'll see."

When he wasn't staring at the ground trying not to laugh, Luke had to admit that it was a very nice ceremony. He was proud of Jess for agreeing to walk his mother down the aisle, and as Liz and T.J. read their vows to each other, he felt a lump in his throat. He wanted that for himself someday.

Back at his apartment after the wedding, Luke told Jess he could stay for a couple days more if he wanted. But Jess was ready to go. He needed to go back to work, he said. But before he left, Jess thanked him for everything—for the money, which he would pay back, and for everything Luke had done for him. Luke was amazed, and responded with, "_I'm here, Jess. I'm always here_." They hugged, for the first time that Luke could remember, and he realized all over again how much he loved his nephew. He remembered what Liz had said about how some things took awhile to sink in. She'd been right. _What do you know,_ he thought. _Guess I did something right after all_.

Once Jess was gone, he turned the self-help tape back on. To determine who his soul mate was, according to the insipid tape, he merely needed to answer a series of questions. Whose phone calls were never unwanted or too long? Did he see her face? Who did he go for when he needed comfort? Did he see her face? Luke stopped short at that. "_Whoa_," he said to himself.

But then, when Lorelai asked him to come to the Dragonfly for its test run, before it officially opened, that guy showed up. The guy he'd seen sitting in the car with her.

So they _were _still together. Luke didn't know why he was surprised. Life was always like that. Aside from that, though, Lorelai's parents had stormed out of the Dragonfly in a huff. Luke didn't know what that was about, but it seemed to be upsetting Lorelai.

So even if he wasn't still legally married to Nicole, although he wouldn't be for much longer, it wouldn't be the right time to do anything.

But when _would _it be? Would that time _ever_ come?

To be continued…

**A/N: **Just so we're clear on this, the following did not happen for the purposes of this story:

-The teaser of Afterboom

-The scene with Shel in Luke Can See Her Face

-Luke inviting Lorelai to the wedding (as much as I loved all their wedding scenes!)

-Anything from Last Week Fights, This Week Tights and Raincoats and Recipes involving Luke and Lorelai dating or kissing

Everything else happened like it did on the show. In the next chapter the story will start to move forward.

Quotes about the Lorelei legend are taken directly from this website (it's not letting me do the formatting, but it's a link off of mindspring dot com. Basically, it's not mine, either).

Lyrics by Bruce Springsteen


	4. Seeing Fireworks

**Disclaimer: **Suffice to say I would not be writing this if I actually owned these characters.

**Author's Notes: **As I said in the last chapter, just so we're clear on this, the following did not happen for the purposes of this story:

-The teaser of Afterboom

-The scene with Shel in Luke Can See Her Face

-Luke inviting Lorelai to the wedding (as much as I loved all their wedding scenes!)

-Anything from Last Week Fights, This Week Tights and Raincoats and Recipes involving Luke and Lorelai dating or kissing

Everything else happened like it did on the show.

Here's where the story starts to move forward and the L/L action begins. Enjoy.

Chapter 4

Seeing Fireworks

_It was good what we did yesterday   
And I'd do it once again   
The fact that you are married   
Only proves you're my best friend   
But it's truly, truly a sin   
Linger on, your pale blue eyes   
Linger on, your pale blue eyes_

The test run at the Dragonfly had, for the most part, been a great success. There was the whole Kirk-running-naked-through-the-square thing, but that hadn't had anything to do with the quality of service at the inn. And apparently there was some kind of crisis with the cooking staff—Michel had scared a bunch of people off and now Sookie needed to find new people or something like that. And then there was the whole thing with Lorelai's parents— Luke wasn't quite sure what that was about. But generally, everyone left happy the next morning. So why was Lorelai trying her best to hide that weary, depressed, about-to-break-down look in her eyes that she'd had that night in the park? It was subtle, but it was there. Luke wasn't sure if anyone else noticed it, but he certainly did. So after everyone else left, he stayed behind to talk to Lorelai.

"Are you okay?" he asked her.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she murmured, not looking at him.

"No, you're not," he argued gently.

She glanced at him, letting the tears in her eyes go. "No. You're right, I'm not," she said, and with a sniffle, walked back inside and sat on the couch in the Dragonfly lobby.

He followed her in and laid a hand on her shoulder. "You want to talk about it?" he asked.

She closed her eyes. "Oh, God, everything's such a mess," she said. "The Dragonfly is the one thing that's going right, but everything else is so screwed up."

"What is it?" he said. "What's wrong?"

"Where do I even start?" she said. She opened her eyes and sighed. "Did you see that guy who was here before? Brown hair and a beard?"

"Yeah…" said Luke cautiously, knowing exactly to whom she was referring.

"Yeah, well, his name is Jason Stiles. He was my boyfriend. _Was_ being the operative word. Dated for five months, broke up a few weeks ago. And you know why?"

Luke felt a small glimmer of relief upon hearing that she wasn't dating that guy anymore, but it was immediately followed by guilt. She was upset, and this was no time to be selfish. "Why?"

"He was my father's business partner," she said. "He was until _his _father, who was one of the partners at the insurance firm my dad used to work at, decided both to sue my father—for some totally bogus reason, I think—and to unceremoniously announce to my parents that Jason and I were dating, which they didn't know. And then the next thing I know, my father has decided to go back to his old company and leave Jason with nothing." She shook her head as if she was still trying to make sense out of everything. "I can't believe it. I mean, my father is a very business-oriented…_materialistic_ guy, but he's not cruel. I never thought he would do this. And when I went to talk to him about it, he just chewed me out. He said I didn't care about our family, just about my boyfriend, and he never expected me to act any differently. And that _hurt_." A tear slipped down her cheek. "So then Jason tells me that he's suing my father. Which he has every right to do, but…my family is more important to me than Jason ever was. I never loved him. Hell, I mean, the only reason I went out with him in the first place was to piss off my mother. How old am I, sixteen?" She rolled her eyes. "So I broke up with Jason, and I have no intention of getting back with him. But apparently he thinks otherwise, and he just showed up here uninvited tonight. And of course my parents had to see him when they came in before they left..." She swallowed hard. "And that's a whole other thing. My parents. They're separated and I knew it and apparently they knew I knew it. But I thought…oh, I don't know what I thought. If I got them here together tonight somehow it would help…but it didn't. Now they're just mad at me and they're mad at each other and I don't know what's wrong…if it's the whole lawsuit thing or what. But they're separated, and when I was a kid I used to think I wanted that, but now…God, I'd give anything for this not to be happening."

Finding no words that could possibly comfort her, Luke settled for sitting down on the couch next to her and squeezing her hand. "I'm sorry," he said softly. After a long silence, he said, "Where's Rory?" Rory had been there the night before, but then she'd suddenly disappeared, and hadn't been back in the morning.

Lorelai closed her eyes again and pinched her forehead, as if she had a headache. "Rory. My God."

"Is she okay?"

"No," Lorelai said dully. "Honestly, she's not."

"What's wrong?" Luke asked, concerned.

She sighed. "Oh, Luke, I would tell you, I would, but believe me when I say Rory would really not want me to talk about it." She let out a bitter little half-laugh. "But don't worry. This is Stars Hollow, so I'm sure you'll find out eventually. Suffice to say she needs to be alone right now, so that's where she is. At home. Alone."

He ran his hand gently up and down Lorelai's back, a bit dizzy from all this new information. "Is there anything I can do? Anything…anything to help?"

She smiled sadly at him. "I wish there was. I really, really wish there was. That's very sweet, Luke, but I can't think of anything."

"Can I get you anything?" he asked desperately. "Coffee…food…anything?"

"Well," she said, "I'm not really hungry right now." She looked up. "But…coffee would be nice…please."

"Come with me," he said. She stood up, and the two of them headed for the diner.

----

Lorelai, unfortunately, was right. He did find out what had happened to Rory that night, in the worst possible way.

One afternoon, a few days later, Rory stopped by the diner for lunch while Lorelai was at work. She had barely settled down at the table with her coffee cup when a familiar-looking blonde girl stormed in and screamed, "Rory Gilmore!"

Rory stopped and looked up, her eyes fearful as all the diner's patrons turned their full attention to her. "Lindsay," she said faintly, and Luke realized that this girl must be Dean's wife.

"What the fuck was Dean doing at your house just now?!" Lindsay's face was red and her eyes were pinched.

Rory turned pale. "You…saw?"

"Yes, I saw, and you didn't answer my question! What the fuck was he doing there?"

"He, um…he just came to borrow something." Rory was a terrible liar, and it wasn't just because of how well he knew her that Luke was able to tell that she was just then.

"Borrow something? You mean like his _wedding ring_? He didn't have it when he went into your house but he had it when he left. Now, can you explain that to me?"

Rory was starting to breathe hard. "He…he left it at my house a few days ago…he came to borrow something during the Dragonfly test run…"

"Borrow _what_? You can't use that excuse every time! What the fuck was he borrowing?"

"He, um…he thought I had this CD…but I didn't."

"And he just happened to take his ring off while he was asking you about a CD?!" Lindsay was shrieking by then and looked like little pieces of her were going to go exploding all over the diner.

Rory's face was turning red. "Just…for a second," she managed.

"You _stay away _from my husband, you little bitch!" Lindsay screamed, and stormed out.

Rory just sat there for a minute, staring into her coffee cup. Then she got up and ran out. Luke could see the tears starting to make their way out of her eyes.

Lorelai came in late that night, after everyone had left, and Luke could see in her eyes that, probably like most of the town, she knew what had happened there that day, and that what everyone thought it meant was probably true. She didn't need to say a word. With one look at her, Luke said simply, "One large cup of coffee coming up."

His eyes met hers when he gave her the cup of coffee. She kept looking at him as she drank it, silently. Their eyes stayed locked for a minute after she finished. Then she opened her purse, paid for the coffee, and got up to leave.

"Thank you for listening," she said quietly before she walked out the door.

----

Luke didn't want to think about it, so most of the time he didn't. But sometimes he couldn't help it. Rory, the sweet, intelligent little girl he'd known for most of her life, had had an affair with a married man. He knew her well enough to know that while she was extremely smart, she was equally naïve, and Dean had probably had a lot to do with the choice they both had made. Dean hadn't come into the diner since the day Lindsay had screamed at Rory, and that was a smart move on his part, because Luke was angry enough at him to make wrestling with him outside the diner look like reasonable behavior. But he was disappointed in Rory, too. No matter what Dean had said to her, she _did_ know better than that. And no matter how much of a bitch that Lindsay girl was, or how bad her marriage to Dean was, it was awful to be cheated on. Luke knew this from experience. In this situation, Lindsay was Luke, Dean was Nicole, and Rory…she was the sock man.

He did his best to act normal and not to show his disappointment whenever Rory came into the diner. Rory had been punished enough, what with the town of Stars Hollow all talking about her and Dean completely avoiding her. But it was hard not to feel for her when she was walking all over town, her eyes cast downward, trying to avoid people's gaze. Luke remembered the night of Dean's bachelor party and felt guilty. He'd only been trying to protect Rory, but maybe he shouldn't have let Dean go through with the wedding. What had actually happened had probably hurt Rory more. She might as well be walking around with a scarlet letter.

"Rory's going to Europe with my mother," Lorelai told him one night in June as he poured her some coffee.

He raised his eyebrows. "How long?"

"The rest of the summer. Back for a few weeks in August."

"What happened to the summer job?"

"She said swiping cards for another year isn't the end of the world." Lorelai sighed. "But she'll miss her father's wedding."

Luke looked at her in surprise. "Her father's getting married?"

"Yeah, July 2nd. He's been engaged for about two years now. I pointed out to her that she'd miss the wedding, and she just said, 'So what, he missed my graduation.' Couldn't really argue with that."

"Oh, boy," Luke sighed. It was almost closing time, so he went to get a broom.

"I am going to the wedding, though," Lorelai said. She exhaled. "That's going to be weird."

"Why?" he asked, starting to sweep the floor.

"Well," she said with a sigh. "He's _Chris_, you know? My first serious boyfriend when I was a teenager. We were so much alike…we had the same taste in music, came from the same kind of family, we both snuck out our windows every night because we couldn't stand to be under the same roof as our parents. So many things about him that made us alike…I thought that meant we were supposed to be together. But then I had Rory." She gave a sad little smile. "I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't be able to grow up fast enough to be a husband and a father. I mean, he had already been saying he wouldn't be able to make it through college. We couldn't be a family just then. He thought we could, but…I knew." She shook her head. "And all these years…I dated other guys, but I always found myself comparing them to Christopher. I always had this…_hope_ that he could get things together and we could be the family we were always meant to be." She let out a long breath. "But he finally does get it together, and it's not because of his daughter, not because of his first love—it's because of some woman named Sherry who thinks green is the new pink and schedules her C-section so it doesn't interfere with her plans. And now he has another daughter, and he'll be there for _her _first words and _her_ first steps and when _she's _valedictorian of _her_ high school." She laughed shortly. "Although, that last one's probably not too likely considering half her genes are Sherry's. But anyway." She sighed again. Luke concentrated on sweeping as she continued.

"But I thought I was over him, you know? When I was dating Jason, I never _once_ thought to compare him to Christopher. And that had nothing to do with Jason." She rolled her eyes. "God, I was nowhere near in love with Jason. But…you know, I thought I was okay with the idea of Christopher getting married. I thought I was completely over him, but…now that the day's getting closer, I'm just getting kind of weirded out by it. I mean, maybe it sounds selfish, but…a part of me just keeps thinking, That's supposed to be _me_ up there! Next to him in the long white dress and the veil…it's just like, something is not _right_ here."

Luke gritted his teeth, gripped the broom handle, and swept crumbs vigorously off the floor. _No! _he thought. _Something is _not _right here! You are not supposed to be so hung up on a man who impregnated you and then was off doing God-knows-what while your daughter was growing up! Why the hell are you still in love with someone who has never been there for you? Has there _ever _been a time in the years we've been friends that I haven't been there for you? Or for Rory? You think there's anything you need that I wouldn't give to you? You think there's anyone in the world who would treat you better than I would? You think I wouldn't make the best damn husband you could ever ask for? Why the hell can you never think of me that way? Is it because of _him_? Is it because of that cad who does nothing but abandon you when you need him? Damn it, Lorelai, what is wrong with you? Or maybe I should be asking what's wrong with _me_? What is so wrong with me when you'd date anyone in the world except your friend who really loves you? _

Lorelai noticed how he was sweeping as if he had some kind of vendetta against the floor, and asked warily, "You okay?"

Luke stopped sweeping and caught his breath. "Yeah." He cleared his throat. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Lorelai had a strange look on her face. "Okay," she said, paying for her coffee. "As long as you're sure."

She must have sensed his reaction to Christopher, because during her subsequent visits to the diner, which became more and more frequent after Rory left for Europe, she never mentioned him. But she did mention lots of other things that were going on in her life. One day, after Rory had been gone for about a week, Lorelai came in and said quietly, "I miss her."

"Rory?"

"No, the latest woman to leave _The View_. Yes, Rory," she said with an eye-roll. "Not that I would miss whatever-her-name-was. I like that girl who used to be on _Survivor_."

"Rory was gone at college all year," Luke pointed out gently.

"Yes, but she was close enough to be able to come home whenever she wanted to, and to call whenever she wanted. Now she's all the way across the ocean, and the roaming charges on her phone are probably quite frightening, so she doesn't call much. Besides, I was so busy this year, with the Dragonfly and everything…I barely had time to miss her. But now it's summer, and I've got my routine down with the Dragonfly, and…I wake up to an empty house, and it's so strange. Especially since she's with my mother, and I wasn't on the best of terms with Rory _or_ my mother when they left."

"Maybe they'll have time to…think about stuff when they're away from home," Luke suggested, pushing her the coffee cup. "They'll come back…calmer, ready to deal with things, you know?"

"Maybe," Lorelai murmured, taking a sip.

She was there every day, and she talked about anything—Rory, her parents, the Dragonfly. Christopher was the one thing she quite noticeably avoided talking about. While it was nice that she was being sensitive to what Luke thought, it also kind of made him nuts. She wasn't telling him what she was feeling about Christopher, but he was dying to know what she _was_ feeling.

By July 2nd, it had been so long since she'd mentioned him that it took Luke a minute to remember why Lorelai wasn't at the diner that day. Then he remembered: Christopher's wedding.

_Damn it_. Luke was in a bad mood all that day, and he was sure his customers noticed. But he couldn't exactly explain it to anyone. Couldn't tell people that as they were there drinking their coffee and eating their burgers, the woman he'd loved for years was rediscovering her own love for a man who consistently disappointed her. And, Luke realized later, he was more concerned about what that would mean for Lorelai than what it would mean for him.

The next evening was the eve of Independence Day. In Stars Hollow, Fourth of July celebrations actually started the night before. On July 3rd, there was a large block party, with all sorts of booths selling food and various merchandise, plus games, performances, art shows, and hot air balloon rides. When all of that was over, there were fireworks, and the next day there was a parade.

Luke was already in a bad mood, thinking about Lorelai and the wedding, and definitely was not in the mood to mingle among the happy townies. He stood in his diner, cleaning the counter and sorting through his bills, when suddenly there came a knock on his door. He was about to say, "We're closed," when he looked up and saw that it was Lorelai.

He started, stood there for a second, and then went to open the door. "Hey," he said, more awkwardly than he normally would have.

"Hey!" she said brightly, and smiled. It was the smile he loved the most about her—the dreamy, girlish one she wore whenever it snowed, or whenever she was taking pleasure in something little that most people passed by without a second thought. "I love the Fourth of July," she said. "All the fireworks, the booths, Kirk in the dunk tank…" She wiggled her eyebrows mischievously. "Come with me! It'll be fun."

Luke hesitated for a moment. "Sure," he said finally. "Why the hell not?"

Outside, people were swarming the streets. Patty's youngest dance students were scampering off the makeshift stage in the town square. Taylor, acting as emcee, announced, "That concludes the dancing portion of this evening's performances. Next, the Stars Hollow majorettes will demonstrate their skills with batons, flags, and rifles, which," he quickly added, "I assure you are made for the sole purpose of being twirled and pose no danger whatsoever. This is sure to be a wonderful show with plenty of thrills, and I'm told it even includes fire batons. This will be a first in Stars Hollow, and we have taken all necessary precautions. The grass is being watered down as we speak, and Fire Chief Newman is standing by with the fire blankets…"

"Let's get something to eat," Lorelai said.

"I'll pass," he said. "I'll…I'll wait for you."

"Okay," said Lorelai, and stood in line for food. Near them, in the dunk tank, Kirk fell as a ten-year-old boy hit the right spot with the ball. "All right, that's enough!" a wet Kirk yelled angrily. "There's a three-in-a-row limit on how many times you can play, Billy!"

"There's no rule that says that," Billy protested.

"When you dunk someone three times in a row there is."

Lorelai returned, holding a large, pink cotton candy on a stick. She and Luke continued walking, silently. Finally, Lorelai said, "What, no lecture?"

Luke looked up. "Huh?"

"Cotton candy? Pink fluffy death? Might as well yank all my teeth out of my head and save myself the trouble of rotting them?"

"Oh— yeah," Luke said awkwardly. "Yeah…you, uh, shouldn't eat that."

Lorelai frowned at him. "Something wrong?" she said.

"No…no, I'm fine," Luke replied. He was still thinking of the wedding. Why did Lorelai look so happy? Had she and Christopher kissed, or worse? Had the wedding even _happened_?

"I went to see my father on Thursday night," she said. "Before I left for Boston. Friday night dinners haven't been happening lately, and…I don't know, I haven't talked to him, like _really _talked to him, in a long time."

"How'd it go?" he asked.

"It was nice, actually," she said. "Surprisingly so. We talked, and…he misses my mother." She swallowed a bite of cotton candy. "He said that all these years, he's been trying to do what he thought was the right thing for his family. And in his mind, that meant making the most money. So we could have a nice house, servants, foreign vacations…he thought that was what would make us happy. But somewhere in the middle of that, I think…he just kind of forgot who his wife and daughter actually _were_. He didn't notice that my mother was losing herself, that her life had no purpose but to arrange these parties and keep the house running just for him. And he didn't notice that his daughter was suffocating, that the kind of life he was providing for me wasn't letting me be _me_." She smiled sadly. "He said he was glad he'd finally gotten me back, and that he'd give up everything, _everything_, if he could just have my mother back."

The two of them kept walking, and Lorelai continued. "At least it looks like this whole lawsuit drama will be over soon," she said. "My father talked with Jason, and he's going to see if he can talk his company into hiring Jason back. At least for a little while, until Jason decides to start his own company someplace else. And if they won't take Jason…well, Dad says he hasn't felt right working at that company since he came back, considering the circumstances. Work is a good way to occupy him, but he says retirement wouldn't kill him. It didn't work when he retired before, but he thinks maybe now it will. And we have the money from my grandmother's estate, so that will help with things, I guess…" Lorelai shook her head. "I don't know. I was just glad to be able to talk with him again without fighting." She stopped to throw her cotton candy stick into a barrel. "I keep remembering what he told me," she continued, "after my grandmother died. The last time he'd talked to her, they had a fight, and when she died, he told me not to forget that I only had one set of parents, because he'd forgotten, and now he had to live with it."

"I'm…I'm glad you talked with him," said Luke. He was confused. He knew the situation, and knew that the talk with her father was a huge thing indeed, but…it couldn't be the only thing making her so happy, could it? It wasn't the only thing that had happened to her that weekend.

"Oh, look!" said Lorelai, pointing at a booth. "Is that punch? Are they using the stuff left over from Founder's Day?"  
"Most likely."

"Ah! Well, I'll get a cup for each of us, then."

While she was paying for it, she glanced over at the hot air balloon. "Wow, I remember going up in that thing the first year I lived in Stars Hollow. I was so disappointed when I found out it was chained to the ground and wouldn't go higher than ten feet. How useless is that? I thought I'd have a bird's eye view of the town, but instead I was just thinking, 'Oh, look! Taylor's bald spot.' 'Gee whiz! A bird crapped on top of the gazebo.'"

The two of them took their punch and settled down on a park bench. Luke looked at her, and before he could stop himself, he blurted out, "So how was the wedding?"

She looked at him in surprise. "It was…very nice," she said, smiling in bewilderment. "Really nice, actually. The reception was at this really fancy hotel in Boston, so I think Chris's parents had a lot to do with planning it. Of course, Straub and Francine pretended they didn't know me." She laughed ruefully. "Ah, well, screw them. Chris and Sherry's little daughter was the flower girl. And she's only a year and a half old, so she just dumped the flowers, turned and ran the other way. Very much her father's daughter, that one."

"So, you, uh…" Luke swallowed hard. "You had fun?"

"I did, actually," she said. "Christopher and I had a nice talk before the wedding."

Luke cleared his throat. "Oh! Uh…you did?"

"Yeah," she said, looking away from him. She laughed once. "It was kind of funny."

"Funny? Funny…how?"

"Well, Chris started talking to me, telling me how he was so glad I could come, and that he was sorry how things had happened, that it hadn't been able to work out with the two of us," she said. "And it was so strange. It was like a big _poof_ of movie fairy dust or something. I realized…"

Luke leaned forward, feeling his heart pushing at his shirt. "What?" he asked, trying to control his voice. "You realized what?"

"That I'm _not_ sorry things didn't work out with us," she said softly.

Luke blinked. "What?"

"Christopher is a great person," she said. "He was my first love, and we shared a lot of great moments. But I can't believe it took me this long to realize it. First loves are totally overrated." She paused. "I was in love with the Christopher who was perfect for me in high school," she said. "Not the Christopher who exists right now. There's a big difference between those two things, and I can't believe it took me this long to see it."

Luke's heartbeat slowed. "So, you're…you're not in love with him anymore."

"No," she whispered. "I haven't been for a long time. I just didn't realize it until last night. Apparently, the Gilmore girls have trouble letting go of their first loves."

Luke felt like he could faint with relief. Instead, he just sat up straighter and said, "Well, good. That's…"

Lorelai looked at him strangely. "It's good that I'm not in love?"

"Well, no, I mean, being in love in general is a good thing, but, you know, if someone like you is in love, I guess it should just be with…"

She raised her eyebrows. "With who, Luke? Be with who?'

"Don't you mean whom?" he stalled, his face reddening.

"Okay, wow. We know who's been watching his Schoolhouse Rock video," she said. "So, with _whom_ should I be in love?"

"I don't know," he mumbled. "I guess just with someone…better."

"Define 'better.'"

"Well, someone…" He stopped. "Someone who's there for you…and will help you when you need it…and take care of you…I mean, not that you need to be taken care of, but…ah, you know what I mean."

She was looking at him seriously, her eyes unblinking, so he stumbled his way through the end of the thought. "You should be in love with someone who…knows what an amazing…what a great person you are…and won't do anything that would ever mean…losing you."

He thought he could see tears shining in her eyes. "Luke," she breathed, and leaned her head in towards her. He started to move his head close to hers.

And then, all of a sudden, people were screaming and running around behind them. Luke pulled back, dazed by what had just almost happened. "Wha—what was that?" he asked.

Lorelai turned and looked. "Oh, the fire baton just went flying into the dunk tank," she said. "_After_ Kirk climbed out and stormed off in protest when Billy dunked him again." She glanced at her watch. "Hey," she said. "The fireworks start in about ten minutes."

The commotion was all over by the dunk tank, so no one was looking at them, but at the moment, Luke felt very conspicuous. "How about we go somewhere else and watch them?" he said. "I know a place. Come with me."

He led her to the bridge over the lake, the one he'd pushed Jess off of right after he'd arrived in Stars Hollow. The two of them sat down on it and let their legs dangle over the edge. "This is beautiful," Lorelai said, looking around. "And quiet."

"Just wait," Luke said. "In a few minutes, it'll be our own private fireworks show."

Lorelai smiled. "Rory and I used to watch the fireworks for the ones in our favorite colors," she said. "We'd bring glowsticks, and we weren't allowed to snap them until there'd been at least one in our favorite color." She turned to him. "What's your favorite color?"

Luke shrugged. "I don't know…blue, I guess."

"_Blue_? Way to be original."

"How is that unoriginal? It's the color I like," he said defensively.

"Yeah, you and eighty percent of all Americans. I read that somewhere."

He rolled his eyes. "And what's your oh-so-original favorite color?"

"Orange." She grinned. "Little bit of teenage rebellion I held onto."

"Liking orange is teenage rebellion?"

"It totally doesn't go with my skin tone," she said, "and it's the most hideous color possible for a car in a rich neighborhood like my parents'. So, of course, I was planning on painting the car I got for my sixteenth birthday bright orange. But then I got pregnant, so that killed the orange car dream."

"You didn't paint the Jeep orange," he pointed out.

"No," she said. "Stars Hollow is colorful enough already."

The fireworks show started with a few small bursts of color.

"All right!" said Lorelai. She raised her cup of punch. "Here's to the Fourth of July and our own private fireworks show."

"Here, here," said Luke. They bumped their plastic cups together and drank the rest of the punch.

They looked up at the sky together. A ring of blue lit up the sky at the same time another ring of orange intersected it.

Luke turned his head toward her. She turned hers toward him. And, before they knew it, their lips were touching. Luke thrilled. His breath caught in his throat as his hand found the back of her head and stroked it. The other arm wrapped itself around her body. Luke had dreamed of this moment so many times, but this was too real to be a dream.

And then, reality hit him all at once, and he pulled away.

"What?" asked Lorelai. "What's wrong?"

"We can't do this, Lorelai," he said, his voice low. "I'm still technically married to Nicole."

Lorelai looked shocked. "But…you're getting divorced!"

"We're _getting _divorced. But we're not divorced yet."

"Well, so what?" she said. "You have no plans to get back together with her. And she cheated on you when you _weren't _getting divorced, so obviously _she _doesn't respect your marriage."

"That's just it, Lorelai!" he said, standing up. "If I kiss you now, while I'm still married to her, that makes me no better than her! No better than…" He reddened as he realized whose name he had just almost said. "Sorry," he mumbled.

"No, no," Lorelai said quietly, standing up herself. "You're totally right." She brushed herself off.

"And anyway," he continued. "This is not how it's supposed to happen, if it does. There is a way you do this. We make plans, we date, we talk, and _then_ it happens, when the setting is perfect."

"Um, excuse me?" She narrowed her eyes. "You think what happened just now wasn't perfect? Minus the you-being-married part?"

"I didn't say that," he mumbled.

"Luke, sometimes the most perfect things are the ones that are spontaneous! The things that just _happen _and it's not the setting you remember, just the thing itself!"

"Lorelai, how long have you known me? I am not exactly the king of spontaneity."

"Well, I'd say you definitely have the potential to be, considering you went on a cruise and got…" The look on her face said she realized she had almost brought up a sore subject. "Sorry," she said.

"Quite all right," he replied curtly. "So once my divorce is finalized, I can kiss you again, but it has to be spur-of-the-moment?"

"Luke," she said, her voice breaking, "don't read too much into that. It was a really good kiss, you know that? But part of what made it so good was that it just _happened_! It just happened and it felt right!"

"Even though it was wrong."

"But if the timing hadn't been wrong, it would have been right!"

He exhaled. "Yes," he admitted. "It would have been right."

They stood there looking at each other in silence. Finally, Luke said, "You like things spur-of-the-moment. I'll remember that for when we're both single again."

----

He had been concentrating on how the night ended—with his frustration at the slow process of divorce, with his anger at himself for being such a Boy Scout for a wife who'd done much worse by him, with his confusion about whether, perhaps, he had acted rightly after all. It was only later that night that what had happened earlier fully hit him.

_I kissed Lorelai_. He had made physical contact with Lorelai outside of his dreams. And Lorelai had loved it as much as he had. Once that sunk in, Luke was much happier. After all these years, all this hoping—was it possible that she felt the same way? That he could really have a future with this beautiful, lively, spirited woman whom he loved so much? All signs seemed to be pointing to "yes."

For the moment, though, things were a tad awkward between the two of them. She was still coming to the diner every day, but the conversation never went deeper than her witty little banters about tiny, inconsequential things. Neither one of them wanted to mention the kiss. It was as if they'd dreamed it, or as if they would jinx something by bringing it up.

Something else, though, started happening around that time, something Luke was grateful for later.

He was greeted one morning by his sister, who bounced into the diner with a huge smile on her face. She'd completed the Ren Faire circuit and was back in Stars Hollow with her husband. "T.J. and I are moving here," she said. "I mean, we'll be gone most of the time, on the circuit, but we just got such good vibes the last couple of times we were here."

Luke couldn't help laughing. "Liz, when you were a kid you would have done anything to get out of here! You took off right after your graduation."

"Well, times change, bro," she said. "People change. I've changed. And I think it's time for me to leave New York."

Luke shrugged. "Well, if you want to move back here, that's great."

Liz smiled. "Come with me if you get a chance," she said. "Take a look at the condo T.J. and I are buying."

Luke did come with her later that day, and stood looking at the place she was going to buy. It was a nice little townhouse in a cute condominium complex that had a pool and tennis courts.

"We really like this place," Liz said softly. "It'll be our little home sweet home, you know? I haven't had one of those since I was a kid."

Luke stood there, shaking his head absently. After all these years, it seemed like Liz had finally gotten her life together. If only she'd been able to do it while Jess was growing up.

"This looks like a great place to live, Liz," he said. "I'm glad you found it."

Liz smiled, and the two of them started walking back toward the diner. "It just took me longer than most people to find what I wanted," she said. "But now I have it and I've never been happier. I have a perfect job, perfect husband, pretty soon a perfect house…" Liz looked up at him. "What about you? You told her yet?"

Luke blinked. "What?"

"You know who I mean," said Liz, grabbing his arm. "Lorelai. You gave her those earrings, didn't you?"

Luke's silence said it all.

"I _knew _it!" exclaimed Liz. "You like her. And she likes you, too. I could tell by the way she talked about you."

"You and Lorelai talked about me?"

"She came up to me when I was in your truck. She thought I was you."

"Oh, yeah, I think she mentioned that."

"Anyway, I was talking about everything you've done for me over the years, and she agreed with everything I said about you. She said that you're one of the good ones—maybe even _the _good one." Liz looked at him pointedly.

"Oh, she did not say that."

"She did!" Liz nudged him. "She feels the same way about you that you feel about her. When are you going to do something about that?"

"When I finish getting divorced, Liz." That came out before he thought about it.

Liz's mouth dropped open. "So you _are _doing something about it!"

"Oh, Liz, don't make a big deal about it," he said irritably.

"But it _is_ a big deal!" said Liz. "It happened to both of us the same year. I found my soul mate and then you found yours."

"Lorelai is not my soul mate."

Liz gave him a pointed look.

He exhaled. "Well, I don't know. Maybe she is," he conceded.

----

And then, just a few days after Liz and T.J. moved into that condo, he was divorced, finally. The papers were signed and everything was completed. Nicole Leahy was out of his life, permanently. But Lorelai Gilmore was in it. And he needed to do something about that.

_Spontaneous_, he thought. _She likes things spontaneous. _

That night he put a sign in the diner window that said "Closed for the Weekend," and drove to Lorelai's house. When she answered the door, he said, "You doing anything tonight?"

She furrowed her brow. "No…"

"I'm divorced now," he said. "Let's go to the beach."

Lorelai blinked. "What?"

"You said you liked things spontaneous," he said. "Well, how about a spontaneous trip to the beach? You like the beach, right?"

"Yes, I do…" she said, sounding bewildered. "I guess it's all right. Tomorrow's my day off."

"Great. Well, come with me."

"Well, hold on!" she said. "I need to pack some stuff. I assume you mean go to the beach overnight?"

"Um….yeah," he said. He suddenly realized he hadn't packed anything. "I'll, uh…wait here while you pack."

She was back in a few minutes with a bag. "So we're…off?" she said, still seeming taken aback by the whole thing.

"Yeah," he said. "But I need to stop by my apartment first."

----

Once they had gotten off the highway, Lorelai asked, "So you got a place for us to stay down here?"

"Uh…no," he replied. "I figured we'd find a place when we got here."

"Not this late, Luke! And not on a weekend in the summer! Do you know how many people are on vacation here now?"

"Oh, there's gotta be someplace. We'll find someplace."

But they couldn't. Every inn, motel, hotel, and B&B they passed had a "No Vacancy" sign out front. They kept driving down the same streets, wondering if the signs would change, but they never did.

Luke parked in the lot by the beach and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, trying to think. "Let's just go sit on the sand," he said finally. "That'll be fun."

Once they got down on the beach, though, it was cold, and when they sat down, the sand was rougher than Luke had expected, and the wind kept blowing it around. "So, I…" Lorelai began, and then had to close her eyes to shield them from the blowing sand.

Luke felt miserable. He'd intended for this to be a romantic night, and instead they were cold and being stung with flying sand. He'd finally gotten his chance with Lorelai, and he'd screwed it up. He didn't want to look up when the wind died down. But when he did, Lorelai was laughing.

"So you were planning on doing something spontaneous?" Her tone of voice was gentle, and he knew she wasn't making fun of him. He started to relax, and laughed himself.

"What can I say?" he replied. "Planned spontaneity is more my thing."

"Oh, Luke," she said, draping an arm around him. "Believe it or not, this was really sweet."  
"Really?"

"But don't try so hard," she said. "Really. One of the greatest things about you is that you always know what to say or do, _without_ trying. You just…make everything better by being _you_."

Luke looked at her, stunned.

Lorelai blushed and shrugged. "What can I say," she said. "I really meant that."

Luke felt a lump in his throat, and leaned forward to kiss her. She kissed him back, and then the wind started up again and drenched them both in sand.

"Okay," said Luke when they'd finished laughing. "Let's get the hell out of here." "Right," said Lorelai. "Dorothy's words have never been truer. Let's go home."

"Wait," said Luke. "I have another idea. That _doesn't _involve sand. Can you give me one last chance at planned spontaneity?"

"You promise it won't involve sandstorms or sub-zero winds or really sharp seashells digging into my ass?"

"I promise."

"All right, then."

They got back in the car and drove north to the mountains. When they got off the highway, Lorelai started to look uneasy. "You know, that can't-find-a-hotel-this-late thing is applicable anywhere, not just by the ocean."

"Oh, I know," he said. "I'm not taking you to a hotel. Bear with me here."

Lorelai looked out the window as they started to drive up the mountain. "Um, Luke?" she said. "This is a ski place, and, uh, if we were in Australia, I'd say, 'Let's hit the slopes, mate!'" She adopted an Australian accent for the end of her sentence. "But seeing as we're not…"  
"Would you relax?" he said. "You'll see what I mean when we get there."

Finally, they parked at the top of the mountain. "This is where I go skiing sometimes," he said, not mentioning that the last time he'd gone it had been with Nicole. He nodded at all the cabins located on the mountaintop. "It's too late to get one of these tonight, but they're up for rent, and they're probably a lot less popular in the summer." He opened the door of his truck and got out. "Bring a sweater if you brought one," he said. "It might be chilly."

The two of them walked behind the cabins and up a little bit more of the mountain. Finally, they reached the top. There was the ski resort's chairlift, with one chair stopped right at the top of the hill, where one would normally get off the lift.

"Here," Luke said, gesturing to the chair. "Have a seat."

Lorelai looked surprised, but pleased. She sat down in the chair, and he sat next to her and looped his arm around her shoulder. The two of them gazed up at the stars, and at the moon, falcate like the arch of a fingernail, that beamed at them. "This is beautiful," Lorelai breathed.

"You should see it when there's snow."

"Thank you for taking me here, Luke." Lorelai snuggled closer to him. She looked into his eyes and let out a contented sigh. "I can't believe this moment has finally come," she said softly.

He looked at her in surprise. "You've wanted this, too?"

"Oh, for a long time," she said. "I just…kept trying to tell myself I didn't, I guess."

"Why?"

"Because…" She bit her lip. "It would mean having to admit that…"

"That what?"

She closed her eyes briefly, then continued. "That I _need _you," she said quietly. "For years I've defined myself by my independence, by my _not _needing anyone, but…I don't know what I'd do without you, Luke."

His breath caught in his throat. He could only manage to say, "You're…amazing," before he leaned in to share with her the world's most perfect kiss.

He sat there with her in his arms, dizzy from the euphoria of it all. He kept expecting to discover that this was all just a dream. "I almost can't remember not wanting this moment," he murmured.

"I don't want it to end, Luke," she whispered.

He stroked her hair with every bit of tenderness he felt before he whispered back, "It won't."

To be continued…

**A/N: **Thanks to everyone who's been sticking with this story. My town, by the way, really does have a celebration on July 3rd that's very similar to the one I described here. (My town's a lot bigger than Stars Hollow, though, so their version would probably be much more entertaining).

Lyrics by Lou Reed

And although I seriously doubt that any of you are reading this, props to the BC Acoustics, who did a lovely a cappella cover of "Pale Blue Eyes" at their spring café. (God, I'm like Pamie with her recaps, going on and on about my life. But hey, I guess the beauty of Gilmore Girls is that there is no one who could watch the show and not find something he relates to.) 

Chapter 5 hopefully coming soon.


	5. Mrs Backwards Baseball Hat

**Disclaimer: **Blah blah blah notminecakes

Chapter 5

Mrs. Backwards Baseball Hat

_And then you took the words right out of my mouth_

_Oh, it must have been while you were kissing me_

_You took the words right out of my mouth_

_Oh, and I swear it's true_

_I was just about to say I love you…_

They fell asleep just like that, holding each other in the chairlift.

The dawning sun woke them up the next day. As it broke through the clouds, Lorelai stirred, squinted, and blinked her eyes open. She studied him for a second, then blinked again. "Hi," she said.

"Hi," he said affectionately, ruffling her hair.

Lorelai yawned and stretched. "Wow," she said. "This is weird."

"What is?"

"Waking up with you." She must have seen the expression on his face, so she added, "Good weird, I mean."

"Good weird?"

"The best weird of my life," she said, and kissed him.

(asterisk)

In the car on the way home, they decided to spend the day at Lorelai's house. "I need to stop at the diner for a minute, though," Luke said. "I ordered this shipment, and I want to see if the guy called about it."

It was ten o'clock when they got back to Stars Hollow. They parked behind the diner so no one would see the truck. "Good move," said Lorelai. "It'll be entertaining once the gossips start talking, but I think we should hold off awhile on that."

"Wanna come up with me?" he asked.

She shrugged. "All right."

Once they were there, Luke checked the answering machine for messages. But instead of information about the shipment, he heard his sister's sobbing voice through the machine.

"Luke? It's nine-thirty, and…God, I screwed up and now T.J.'s gone, and you're not there and I don't know where you are but everything's just such a mess…"

Luke closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. "I _knew _it," he said, in a barely controlled voice. "God _damn _it! This _always _happens!" He sighed and turned to Lorelai. "Sorry," he said. "I'm just going to call and make sure she's all right."

When he called Liz, though, the line was busy. "Damn it," Luke said again, softer. He closed his eyes and tried to think. "I am really, really sorry about this," he said. "You have no idea how sorry. But I'm going to have to go check on her. This…this has happened before, and it hasn't been pretty. Okay?"

Lorelai looked disappointed but she nodded. "Of course. You need to make sure she's all right."

"I'll drop you off at your place," he said. "And then I'll come by later. Okay?"

"Okay."

He drove over to Liz's condo once he'd dropped Lorelai off. Liz came to the door, her eyes puffy. "Oh, Luke, thank God," she said.

"Are you okay?" Luke asked, concerned. "I tried calling, but it was busy."

"Oh," Liz said with a sniffle. "I must have knocked the phone off the hook somewhere."

"Liz, what _happened_?"

Liz burst into fresh tears. "Come in," she managed to say. "Sit down. I'll tell you."

Once he was settled on her couch, Liz started to talk. "T.J. and I were talking," she said. "And I was saying now that we have our own place, with a backyard and everything, maybe we should get a dog. Because I've always wanted a dog, you know? And it just seems to go with the whole suburban thing, you know, husband, house, dog. But T.J. starts telling me he's afraid of dogs, because he was chased by one as a kid or something, and I started telling him it was okay, I could just get a _little _dog or something, and he said no, he's afraid of _all _dogs, no matter how small they are. So I started to get upset, because I was just thinking, you know, what if this is an indication of how the whole marriage is going to go? What if he doesn't respect my wishes? What if he's going to be selfish like this all the time? So I started to tell him that, and he's telling me that _I'm _the one being selfish, that it's a legitimate fear and I should respect it, and it went on for awhile, and then he said he needed to get out for awhile, so he left." Liz started crying again. "I'm so scared, Luke. I'm so scared that I've messed things up and now the greatest guy I've ever met has _left _me!"

"Okay, okay," said Luke, trying to remain calm. "How long ago did he leave?"

"About an hour," she said.

"Okay. And did he say where he was going?"

"No, he just said he needed to get out for awhile and he'd be back soon."

"Be back soon?"

"That's what he said, but I've had guys who said they'd be back soon walk out and never come back. You remember."

"But he gave you no indication that he wasn't planning on returning?"

"Well…no, but…"

And Luke's temper was shot. "God _damn _it, Liz!" he yelled, slamming his hand down on a table. "You had a fight! You had a stupid little fight that you won't even remember a year from now! That's how marriages work! You fight, you make up, you fight again, you make up again! You give, you take, you make compromises! And sometimes you just need to get away for awhile to think! Which is what your husband is doing right now!"

"You think so?" Liz's face was hopeful.

Luke sighed, calming down a little. "Yes, I think so," he replied. "And I think you should go hang up the phone in case he calls."

"Oh, geez," Liz sighed. "I've been really stupid, then."

Luke wasn't going to argue with that one. "I'll make you some coffee," he muttered, going into the kitchen as Liz went to hang up the phone. His anger grew when he remembered that he could be spending this time with Lorelai.

Less than a minute after Liz hung up the phone, it rang, and she leapt for it. "Hello?" she said, her voice anxious. "T.J.! Oh, baby, I'm so sorry! Can you forgive me? Where are you?...You're where?"

Just then there was a knock on the front door. "You gonna let me in?" came T.J.'s voice from outside.

Liz hung up the phone and ran for the door. "T.J.!" she cried, and the two of them kissed.

"Oh, baby, I'm sorry," T.J. said. "I left, but I just couldn't stop thinking of you, and I parked a little bit up the street and I called, but it was busy until…"

"I'm sorry I was so selfish about the dog thing," said Liz, kissing him again. "If you're afraid of dogs I respect that."

"No, no," T.J. countered. "I'd be fine with a little dog, really. I don't think that would scare me."

They went on like that, alternating talking and kissing, until finally Luke said, "The coffee's ready. I need to get going."

They stopped and looked at him. "Oh, Luke," said Liz. "Thank you so much for coming over like this. It was really great of you."

_You have no idea_, he thought. It seemed as if he should have been less angry by then, but he was thinking of Lorelai back at her house and he was steaming. "Yeah," was all he said before he left.

Luke was still seething when his truck pulled in at Lorelai's house. When he came in, he found Lorelai sitting on her couch, changed into sweats. "Sorry I took so long," he said, still in rant mode. "My _incredibly _mature sister had a fight with her husband over a damn dog, because she's too damn stubborn to give in, and T.J., Gary, whatever the hell his name is told her he was going out for awhile, and she starts freaking out because she thinks he's leaving her for good, even though he gave _no _indication that he would, and I have to sit there comforting her until he calls, and when he calls it turns out he's right outside, and he comes in and they kiss and make up and it's all very _Bewitched_…wasn't that the show that always ended with them kissing? I don't know. God Almighty." Luke threw back his head and sighed. "Why do I do this? All these people who can never help themselves. Why can't I ever just let people figure stuff out on their own?"

Lorelai was sitting there watching him with the strangest look on her face, looking at him in a way she never had before. Luke suddenly felt uncomfortable. "You okay?" he asked uncertainly.

"Luke?" Lorelai said softly.

"Yeah?"

Lorelai looked straight into his eyes. "I love you."

He always thought he'd be the first to say it.

But right then, as he kissed her, being second felt better than anything he had ever imagined.

(asterisk)

Waking up in Lorelai Gilmore's bed on Sunday morning was the best weird of his life.

He reached over and stroked her hair. She stirred a bit, then opened her eyes. "Hi," she whispered.

"Go back to sleep," he whispered back. "I'm going to go make you some breakfast."

Once he was in her kitchen, he discovered that she didn't have much food. _God, she really can't cook_, he thought. Eventually, he found some pancake mix and chocolate chips.

Lorelai looked amazed when she finally shuffled downstairs. "Coffee _and _chocolate chip pancakes?" she said. "Luke, I've officially corrupted you!"

"Don't flatter yourself," he retorted. "You just didn't give me much to choose from to make you breakfast."

"Uh-huh," she said, settling at the table and taking a bite out of her pancakes. "Oh! Wow, a girl could get used to this!"

"Don't," he groaned. "I don't want to be responsible for your early death by chocolate."

Lorelai smiled and took another bite of pancake. Then she looked thoughtful. "You know what the weirdest thing about this is?" she said.

"What?"

"That it doesn't feel weird at all," she said. "It feels like…like I've been wearing sneakers for years and thought they were comfortable, and…fun, but then someone gave me a pair of kitty slippers that meow when you press the ear, and it's like, hel-lo! Million times more comfortable _and _more fun."

"Okay, the slippers are too weird for them not to exist in actuality."

"They're in the back of my closet somewhere. I wore out the thing that makes them meow." She smiled. "But…you know what I mean. This just feels _right_."

He sat down at the table with her. "It feels even more right than I imagined," he admitted.

Lorelai raised her eyebrows. "You've imagined this?"

He shrugged, embarrassed. "Well…you know…"

"How long have you been imagining this for?" she asked, her voice curious.

"Oh, I don't know."

"Yes, you do…" she said, her voice teasing. "How long, Luke? How long?"

Seeing that she wasn't going to let it go, he sighed. "Since the day you broke your leg," he said neutrally. "That was when I knew for sure that this was…what I wanted."

Lorelai looked shocked. "Oh, Luke!" she said. "That long? Really?"

"Yeah, well…" he mumbled, embarrassed. "Have _you _ever imagined this?"

Lorelai nodded thoughtfully. "Yes," she said. "I think I have…ever since the day Rory first started Chilton."

He raised his eyebrows. "Why then?"

"Do you remember?" she said. "A Chilton dad asked me out, and I said no, but you just had this…reaction when I told you about it, and it just made me go, 'Wow, I've never thought of Luke like that before.'" She looked at him. "But once I did think of you like that, I liked the idea a lot," she said. "But I was scared. You were just someone I…_valued_ so much as a friend that I was afraid we'd break up if we ever got together, and we'd lose the friendship."

"I was afraid of that, too," he said.

"I mean," she said, very seriously for her, "you're one of the few people in my life who I know is always there for me, no matter what. Who'll just drop everything and come help me if I need it. You just have this…uncommon kindness. And Luke," she said, "even if you have had feelings for me for years, I really don't think that would have changed anything. Even though you love me, that's not why you're this good to me. You're this good to me because you're just being _you_."

"Oh, well…" Luke blushed. "I don't know…I mean…"

"And that's the kind of friendship that I would never, ever want to lose," she said.

He felt his heart swell, and he reached over and squeezed her hand. "And you never will," he said.

She smiled. "So…we've established that I love you and you love me," she said. "I guess this means we're dating?"

Luke shrugged. "Guess so," he said.

Lorelai shook her head. "Wow," she said. "That's so weird. 'Hi, I'm Lorelai, and this is my boyfriend, Luke.' 'Hi, I'm Lorelai, Luke's girlfriend.' 'Luke Danes—not just the diner guy, also the guy I'm dating!'"

He rolled his eyes. "That last one sounded like a commercial," he said.

"So?"

"So now that we're dating you're _advertising _me?"

"Ooh!" she said. "Now that could be fun. But all the good slogans are already taken. 'Luke Danes: nobody does it like you.' 'There are some things money can't buy. For everything else there's Luke Danes.' 'Luke Danes: he's everywhere you want to be."

"I take it back," he groaned. "We're _not _dating if this is what dating does to you."

"I _love _you, honey," she replied teasingly. Then she looked at her watch. "Ooh! Gosh, I need to get to work."

She started to put her dishes away in the sink when suddenly she stopped and turned around. "The day I broke my leg?" she said. "Really?"

Luke nodded.

Lorelai picked up a dish towel and threw it at him. "Damn you!" she said. "Why didn't you say something then? All these years I could have been getting free coffee!"

(asterisk)

Lorelai had to work at the inn that day, but Luke still had the "Closed for the Weekend" sign in the diner window, so he kept it closed and stayed at Lorelai's house. When Lorelai got home that night, the first thing she said was, "We need to talk."

Luke looked up. "About what?"

"About the fact that this town is a freaking goldfish bowl and gossip is the equivalent of Ani DiFranco's plastic castle."

Luke winced. "People know about us?"

"They're talking," she said. "Babette saw your truck outside, so she knows that's where you've been. Sookie wanted to know why she couldn't get in touch with me all weekend and why the diner was closed. And those are just the people I saw today."

"Great," Luke groaned. He could imagine what Patty would have to say about his truck being parked outside Lorelai's house for two days, and what Taylor would say once he realized why Luke had closed the diner for—gasp!—a whole weekend. "What did you tell them?"

"I told them I'd have to talk with you before I told them anything."

Luke sighed. "Well, this was going to happen eventually. I guess sooner's better than later."

"So…what will we tell them?"

Luke exhaled. "We'll tell them the truth," he replied, "and we'll just stand back and roll our eyes at their reactions."

"Sounds like a plan," she said. Then her face grew serious. "Before we tell any of them, though," she said, "I want to make sure we tell Rory. This is going to affect her life, and things have not gone well when I've kept information from her before."

"Good idea." He nodded.

"So I'm going to call her right now," she said. "Hopefully she'll answer."

"You want me to leave?" he asked.

"No, stay!" she said. "I want you to be here for this, and Rory might want to talk to you."

She picked up the phone and dialed Rory's cell phone number. "Rory! Hi!" she said. "How are you?...Good! What have you been up to?...Oh, fun! How's Grandma?...Great, tell her hi….What? What makes you say that?...I do not sound nervous! Why would I be nervous?...Okay, you win. I do have something to tell you.…Something good, don't worry! At least I hope you'll think it's good. Okay, well…" Lorelai took a deep breath. "Luke and I are dating." There was a long pause. "Rory? Say something." Another pause. "Just this weekend….He took me up north to the mountains….No, not _totally _unexpected….Well, we'd kind of acknowledged our feelings but he wasn't divorced from Nicole yet….We haven't told anyone yet. We wanted you to be the first to know….You're welcome….Yes, I know….Yes, honey, I've thought of that….But you're okay with this?...No, I didn't think you wouldn't be, I just wanted to make sure, I mean, you were asking a lot of questions….Oh, I know, it's completely understandable….Thank you!...He's right here. Would you like to talk to Luke?...Okay, here he is."

Luke swallowed hard and took the phone. "Rory!" he said.

"Hi, Luke!" came her voice from across the Atlantic.

"How's, uh…how's Europe?"

"Oh, it's been fun so far!" she replied. "Although I think it was more fun when we stayed in hostels."

"Good, good." Luke laughed nervously. "Where, uh, where are you now?"

"We're in London."

"Good, uh, that's good."

After a silence Rory said, "So what's this I hear about you dating my mom?"

Luke laughed again. "Well, uh…yeah, it just happened this weekend."

"Mom told me."

There was another silence, and then Luke said, "Are you…okay with this?"

"Of course I am!" said Rory, sounding genuinely surprised. "It's just that I didn't expect it. And it's not like you need my permission."

"No," said Luke, "but…I wouldn't feel right dating your mom if it wasn't okay with you."

Rory was quiet for a second. "Well, thank you," she said, "but honestly? I can't think of anyone besides you who'd be good enough for her."

Luke was touched. "Well, thank you, Rory," he said.

"It's just…Luke?" she said, suddenly sounding timid and much younger.

"Yeah?"

"I just really hope that it works out with you guys," she said, and he knew that she was dreading the consequences if it didn't.

Luke could feel his heart breaking. "I really hope it does, too, Rory," he said.

(asterisk)

When Lorelai came into the diner the next day, everyone fell silent.

Lorelai stopped and twisted her mouth into an "oooookay" face. She walked over to the counter and said, out of the corner of her mouth, "So apparently I have the power to render a whole town speechless?"

"Lorelai—"

"When did I suddenly develop this power? Have I always had it? Why can't I control it, then? Because God knows if I could control it I'd have used it on my mother years ago."

Luke rolled his eyes. "I thought I'd prepared myself for anything, but not—"

"…the Twilight Zone, I hear you. Oh, I'm sorry…the Outer Limits."

"You have a good memory."

"So what do we do?" Lorelai asked. "Go on living in a slightly-less-chaotic Charlie Chaplin film until someone decides to pull a _Pleasantville _with sound instead of color?"

Luke paused. "Or we could…"

"What?"

An idea had been forming in his head. It would get everything over with _and _it would piss off Taylor—a win-win situation. "Ah, what the hell," he said, and he leaned over the counter and kissed her. At least he'd prepared himself for what would inevitably come next.

And the volume in the diner was back on, full-blast.

(asterisk)

Rory returned home a few days later. The timing was fortuitous, because with the town still in an uproar over Luke and Lorelai's relationship, everyone was too busy to think about what had driven Rory to Europe in the first place. When Rory first got back to Stars Hollow, she was happy and bubbly, full of stories about Europe. But within a week, she looked as upset as she'd been when everyone found out about her and Dean.

"What's going on with her?" he asked Lorelai one day at her house in concern.

Lorelai looked tired. "Same shit, different developments," she said. "Lindsay and Dean are in the process of divorcing, but Dean is transferring to a school in Chicago. So now not only does she feel like she broke up a marriage, she feels like she drove Dean away. And it's got to be worse for her, because I think she got her hopes up that things could have worked out with her and Dean, but now she knows they can't." Lorelai sighed. "This is one of those moments," she said.

"One of what moments?"

"One of those mother moments where my heart and my brain are going at each other," she said quietly. "My brain is telling me that she needs to know that she can't just sleep with a married man and expect everything to be fine afterwards. But my heart just wants to go into her room and hug her and tell her everything's going to be all right, you know?" She sighed again. "Not that it would matter. She doesn't want to talk to me about it."

Luke was silent for a minute. "What if I took her out?" he said. "You know, get her mind off things. Maybe it would be better if she went out with someone who, you know…theoretically doesn't know what she's going through."

"Maybe that would help," Lorelai agreed. "Why don't you go ask her?"

Luke knocked on Rory's bedroom door. "Hey, Rory?" he said. "It's Luke. Can I come in?"

Rory came to the door, her eyes red and puffy. "Hi, Luke," she said.

"I know you love ice cream," he said. "How about we go out for some ice cream? I know a really good place."

"Better than Taylor's?" she asked.

Luke rolled his eyes. "Infinitely better than Taylor's," he said. "So what do you say?"

Rory shrugged. "All right," she said. "Thank you, Luke."

He knew exactly where he was taking her: a place he hadn't been since childhood. If he was going to date Lorelai, he would be Rory's father figure, and he knew no better place for a father to take his daughter than Johnson's Ice Cream, which was a couple of towns over. "Wow," Rory said when they got there, looking around. "I've never been here."

"My dad used to take me here when I was a kid," he said. "There was a playground around here, but I think they built a new one. And over there," he nodded at a patch of grass next to the ice cream stand, "there was a merry-go-round. I mean, not the kind with horses, just a big metal thing that kids sat on that could be spun around."

"I've been on those," said Rory. "Those were fun."

Luke laughed. "Not quite as fun after you've eaten an entire banana split," he said. "I found that out the hard way."

Rory ordered a double chocolate cone. Luke hesitated for a minute before ordering a scoop of vanilla with jimmies. Rory looked at him in shock. "Who are you and what have you done with Luke?" she said. "You don't even drink _coffee_!"

"Ah, well, one ice cream won't kill me," he replied. He'd brush well afterwards.

When they were settled down at a table, he said, "So you're really okay with me and your mom dating?"

She smiled. "Luke, I told you," she said. "Yes, I really am."

"Well, your opinion is important to me."

Rory was quiet for a minute. "My mom didn't really date anyone when I was little," she said. "No one that I met, anyway. And I didn't mind. I liked it being just her and me." She licked her ice cream cone. "But when I got a little older I started to wish she and my dad would get back together. You know, so I could have a family like all my friends had. It was something I used to want on-again, off-again. But then when I got older, I just wanted her to be with someone who'd make her happy and I liked, too."

"That makes sense," Luke said understandingly.

"I was just always afraid that—" she stopped.

"What?" he pried gently.

"That if you and Mom were together you'd break up," she finished reluctantly, "and then I wouldn't get to see you anymore. And I'd hate that, because…we're friends."

Luke smiled. "Yes, we are," he said. "And we will be no matter what happens with me and your mom. That's a promise."

Rory smiled back. "Thanks, Luke," she said.

When they were back at the Gilmores' house, Rory turned to him and gave him a hug. "Thanks for this, Luke," she said. "I've been upset lately, and this kind of made me feel better."

"Anytime," he said, hugging her back.

Later, Lorelai gave him her own hug. "My kid is smiling now!" she said. "She's smiling because of _you_, Luke!" She leaned in and kissed him, then said, "If I didn't already love you so much, this would make me fall in love with you right here." She looked into his eyes, very seriously. "Thank you for taking good care of my daughter."

(asterisk)

In September, Rory headed back to Yale, once again with the aid of his truck. Not long after that, Lorelai got a phone call, after which she turned to Luke and said, "Well, I have some good news and some bad news."

"Oh, yeah?"

"The good news is that my parents decided to give things another try," she said.

"Oh, that's great!"

"Yeah, it is," she said.

"So what's the bad news?" he asked.

She groaned. "Friday night dinners are back on."

(asterisk)

Luke and Lorelai also started having more dates. They went to the movies, to a baseball game, to a restaurant. But while they were out on one of their dates, Lorelai started laughing. "This is ridiculous," she said.

"What is?"

"Us! Going out on dates like we just met! Like we're just getting to know each other! How long have we known each other?"

"Well, what do you suggest we do instead?"

"Oh, I don't know…what we normally do, just…we'll be doing it as a couple."

"What we normally do is you sitting in the diner while I yell at you about your caffeine intake. That's not dating."

"Well, we'll just do it with matching jogging suits this time."

"Lorelai…"

"Oh, I don't know, we'll just hang out and talk, you know…like two friends who happen to be in love."  
So that was what they started doing. When Rory was home for Thanksgiving, he even earned the dubious honor of getting to participate in a Gilmore movie night. He could only shake his head in disbelief as Lorelai and Rory ate enough junk food to kill a third-world country and made fun of the movie so quickly that Luke couldn't even hear the dialogue.

After awhile, though, he realized that coming to Lorelai's house all the time was starting to feel like home. And Luke, who had always hated change, realized that if they weren't going out on dates, all there was left to do was to make the biggest change of his life.

He talked to Rory first one day. He called her first, drove down to New Haven, and took her to lunch at a nice restaurant.

"You said you wanted to talk to me about something," Rory said between bites of her French fries.

"Yes, I do. I was wondering…" Luke hesitated. Once he said it, it would become real. There'd be no going back.

"What?"

"I was wondering…" Luke exhaled. "I was wondering what you'd think if I asked your mom to marry me."

Rory stopped short. Her eyes widened. "You're going to get married?" she said, sounding more excited than Luke had heard her sound in ages. "Luke!" She got up, ran to his side of the table, and gave him a hug. "You're going to be my stepdad!"

Luke laughed, a bit taken aback by her enthusiasm. "Well, not yet," he said. "I have to ask her, and…she has to say yes."

"She'll say yes," said Rory. She hugged him again. "Oh, Luke," she said happily. "This is so great!" She sat back down.

"I need some advice, though," he said. "I want this to be perfect for her, and…do you have any ideas?"

Rory grinned. "Oh, Luke, that's so sweet!" she said.

"You know your mom best," he said. "Where and how do you think she'd like me to propose to her?"  
"Hmm…" Rory frowned in concentration. Then her face lit up. "I know! She's always said that the best things that have happened in her life have happened in the snow. Her best birthday, her first kiss, my first steps…even when I was born, it was one of those freaky snow-in-October things."

"In the snow…" murmured Luke.

(asterisk)

"I told you it would look better in the snow," he said to her.

It was Saturday, two weeks before Christmas, and Luke and Lorelai had gone to the same ski place they'd been in the summer. It was after midnight, and snow was falling lightly all around them. The snow lightly frosted all the trees, and little flakes were adorning Lorelai's hair as she sat next to him in the chairlift.

Lorelai had the same adorable smile on her face that she always had when it snowed. "This is beautiful," she said, resting her head on his shoulder. "Thank you for taking me here, Luke."

Luke swallowed hard and wondered if his pounding heart would ever slow. _Ask her now_, he told himself. _It's now or never_.He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a box. "I have something to ask you," he said. He opened the box up, revealing a ring. Lorelai gasped. Her eyes grew wide, and her power of speech seemed to be rendered useless.

Luke didn't know how he got up the nerve to speak, but he found himself saying, "What can I say, Lorelai…you're just…the most amazing woman I've ever met." He caught his breath, and continued. "I love you. I've never been happier in my life than I've been in these months we've been together, and…I'd give anything to make you that happy." He took another deep breath, then continued. "Lorelai Gilmore, will you marry me?"

A sob escaped Lorelai's lips. Tears were welling up in her eyes. "Yes," she managed to get out before she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. Then she looked right into his eyes. "I love you so much, Luke."

(asterisk)

When they got home, Rory was jumping up and down like a little kid. "You're getting married!" she squealed, and threw her arms around both of them.

"Whoa, easy there," Lorelai laughed. "Let's go sit down."

When they were all seated in the living room, Lorelai said, "Okay, now I am dying to go shout this from the rooftops, but we're not telling _anyone _until next Friday, okay?"

"Why next Friday?" Rory asked.

"Because I learned my lesson when I was engaged to Max. My parents will be the first to know. And we figured we'd tell them over Friday night dinner." Lorelai glanced up at him with an apologetic smile. "Sorry, Luke, I tried to protect you from the horror that is Friday night dinner for as long as I could, but if you're going to marry me, you're going to have to face Emily and Richard."  
"It'll be worth it then," he replied, smiling and still in a state of disbelief.

They didn't tell anyone all week, but Luke was pretty sure that townspeople suspected. Lately, he'd been in a much better mood than they were used to seeing him in. He was constantly smiling, and doing things that no one had thought he'd ever do: watching the Christmas pageant, letting Taylor and the carolers have their hot chocolate.

But his mood wasn't quite so good when Friday rolled around. The prospect of having dinner with Lorelai's parents was almost as nerve-racking as proposing to her had been. He'd met them before, but that had simply been as Lorelai's friend, not her fiancé. And although Emily had called him and Lorelai idiots for not dating each other, Luke couldn't believe that at least part of Emily would be disappointed that her daughter was marrying a man who worked in a diner instead of Christopher, or at least someone rich enough to fit into their society.

"What did you tell them about me?" Luke asked nervously, wearing a shirt and tie as he waited for her to get dressed that evening. "Did you even tell them we were dating?"

"I mentioned it," she replied, applying some lipstick. "They asked if you could come to Friday night dinner sometime, but I always got you out of it by saying you had to work."

Luke was pacing up and down the floor of Lorelai's bedroom. "Would you relax?" Lorelai said. "They're going to love you! Keep in mind that every time they've met you before it's been at a time when you were helping me out, and there's no way you could ever change that impression they have of you."

"Yeah, well, I wasn't going to marry you then!" he said, still pacing. "God, I've had a stomachache all day."

"So have I, actually."

Luke looked at her. "Why do _you _have a nervous stomach? You see them all the time!"

"It's not a nervous stomach," she said. "My stomach's just been bothering me today for some reason."

"You okay?" he asked, concerned.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be fine."

"You sure?" he asked. "Are you going to make it through the evening?"

"Luke, stop trying to get out of this. We're telling my parents _tonight_."

Luke couldn't quite believe it when the Jeep pulled up at the Gilmore mansion. "Holy…" he trailed off. "This is where you grew up?" He'd known that Lorelai's parents were rich, but seeing it was an entirely different thing than hearing about it.

"Unfortunately, yes."

Emily Gilmore came to the door when they rang the bell. "Hello, Lorelai, Rory. Luke." Her eyes locked with his and a prim little smile came to her face.

Luke extended his hand. "Nice to see you again, Mrs. Gilmore."

"It's nice to see you again, too, Luke," she replied, shaking his hand. "Come in, come in."

Richard Gilmore was sitting in the living room reading the paper. When they came in he looked up. "Well, hello!" he said. He stood up and walked over to Luke. "It's nice to see you again, Luke," he said. "How have you been?"  
Luke shook his hand. "I've been fine, thank you, sir," he said. "And you?"

"Oh, I can't complain," Richard replied. "Come in, sit down! Have a drink."

_God Almighty_, Luke thought. _These people have a little mini-bar in their living room! _

"Would you like a drink, Luke?" Emily asked him.

"Uh…martini, if that's all right," he replied.

"Oh, it's more than all right. Lorelai, what will you have?"

"I'm good, thanks," she murmured, looking down.

Emily frowned. "Everything all right, Lorelai?" she asked.

"Yeah! Yeah, I'm fine."

"Well, I certainly hope so." Emily turned her attention to Luke. "So, Luke," she said, "Lorelai tells me you usually work on Friday nights."

"Well, usually I do," he answered, sitting up as straight as he could. "But tonight I'm having someone else close for me."

"Ah. I see."

Luke couldn't stand it. Was that a good "I see" or a bad "I see"? These people were impossible to read. He was more comfortable around the Stars Hollow townies, who were so obvious about what they were feeling. He sipped his drink while tapping his foot nervously.

"Luke, Lorelai tells me you don't eat red meat," said Emily. "So I had Jessamine make chicken marsala for tonight."

Luke's first thought was, _Good God! They have a _cook_? No wonder Lorelai never learned how! _But then he felt slightly embarrassed. "Oh, uh…thank you, Mrs. Gilmore, that was…very thoughtful," he said. "But, I…I'm sorry if that inconvenienced you."

"Oh, nonsense," Richard chimed in. "I've been looking for an excuse to have chicken marsala for weeks now."

The maid came in and announced, "Dinner is ready."

When they were all seated at the table, Lorelai looked over at him. Luke nodded. "Mom, Dad," said Lorelai, "Luke and I have something to tell you."

Emily paused. "Oh?" she said. "Please do tell us."

Lorelai paused. "Well…" she said. "Luke and I are getting married."

Luke couldn't look at them. It was the loudest silence he'd ever heard.

"We just got engaged last Saturday," Lorelai continued. "We haven't told anyone yet. We wanted to make sure we told you first."

Another long pause. Finally, Richard broke it. "Well," he said. "Congratulations!" He smiled.

Then Emily smiled, too. "Yes," she said. "Congratulations."

Luke nodded, smiling uncomfortably. "Thank you," he said. Damn it, why were they so hard to read? He couldn't tell whether or not they were happy about it or not.

"Have you set a date yet?" Emily asked.

"Uh, no, not yet," replied Luke, glancing at Lorelai, who was staring at her lap. "We'll be having the wedding at the Dragonfly, though. We have discussed that."

"Oh, how nice!" said Emily. "Now, tell me again, how long have you two been dating?"

"Since…this summer," he answered nervously.

"Oh."

"But we've known each other for years."

"Yes, I've heard," Emily replied. "Now, will this be your first marriage?"

Luke blushed. "No, uh…my second."

"Oh, really? You were married before Lorelai knew you?"

"No, uh, I was married, uh…a little more recently."

"Great chicken marsala," Rory piped up, and Luke was grateful. Only then did he realize how much he'd been sweating.

"Well, thank you, Rory. I'll be sure to tell Jessamine." Emily suddenly frowned at Lorelai. "Are you all right, Lorelai? You haven't even touched your chicken."

"Yeah," she mumbled, not looking up. "My stomach's just bothering me."

"Do you need medical attention?"

"Mom, are you okay?" Rory sounded worried.

Lorelai winced and then started to slump over in her seat. Luke quickly put out his hand to catch her. "Yes. Okay, fine, no, I'm not all right." She sucked in her breath. "Owwww…"

Rory got up from the table and ran over. "Where does it hurt, Mom?"

"Sharp pain. Right side. Owwww…"

"Right side?" Luke repeated in disbelief. "Lorelai, that's your appendix! We need to get you to a hospital!"

"Good Lord!" Richard gasped.

"God, no," Lorelai moaned. "Not tonight. Tonight was supposed to be great…"

"Don't worry about that," Luke said firmly. "You just need to get to a doctor. Now, can you stand up?"

Lorelai groaned. "Ohhhh, I can try."

"I'll help you," said Luke, and he did, putting one hand in hers and one on her back. Lorelai stood up, shakily.

"I'll go get coats," Rory said quickly, running out of the room.

"Thank you, Rory," Luke called over his shoulder.

"My God, Lorelai!" Emily looked shocked by the whole thing. "How long have you had these pains? Why didn't you say anything?"

"Mom…please…not…now…" Lorelai managed to get out.

Luke turned to his future mother-in-law. "Thank you for dinner, Mrs. Gilmore," he said. "It was wonderful. But Lorelai needs to get to the hospital _right away_."

"She's not going without us! I demand to come along."

"As do I!" Richard put in firmly. "We need to come to make sure she's getting the right care! That the right doctors are seeing to her!"

"All right, fine," said Luke hurriedly, noting Rory coming down the stairs with the coats. "But the Jeep isn't big enough for everyone and that's the car parked in the driveway, so that's the one we're taking. You'll have to follow us in your car."

(asterisk)

In the emergency room as they waited, Lorelai moaned, "God, why did so many people have to get sick or hurt today? Remind me never to get sick on a weekend again."

"Well, you can only get appendicitis once," Luke said, trying to sound soothing. "That's the bright side to all of this."

Inside, though, he was so scared that it was hard to believe that just a few hours earlier, dinner with Emily and Richard had seemed so nerve-wracking. What if the doctors didn't perform surgery in time? What if it wasn't appendicitis after all, but something more serious?

"There has _got _to be someone we can talk to!" Emily said angrily. "This is unacceptable! She should not have to wait in line this long! Richard, what doctors do you know who are working tonight?"

"I'm gonna be…" And before she could finish her sentence, she started to vomit. Luke saw what was happening and quickly put out his hands. "It's okay, Lorelai," he said gently. "You'll be out of here before you know it."

"Luke." Lorelai sounded embarrassed and regretful. "Luke, I'm so sorry…look at you, you've got throw-up all over you…"

"It doesn't matter," Luke said firmly. "Don't worry about it, Lorelai."

"But you…you need to get cleaned up…go wash yourself off or something…"

"I can get you some paper towels or something," Rory said anxiously. Her face was pale and Luke knew she was just as worried as he was.

"That would be great, Rory," he said.

The one good thing about her throwing up was that it moved her up in line much faster than looking for a doctor that the Gilmores knew would have. Luke, Rory, Emily, and Richard stayed by her as she was taken from room to room. Luke never let go of her hand. Finally, she was wheeled into surgery, and they were all left standing in the waiting room.

Luke couldn't concentrate. He was trying to read a magazine, but he just kept reading the same paragraph over and over. Lorelai was all he could think about. He felt like getting up and pacing, but he thought that might worry Rory more, and the poor girl was upset enough as it was. It was awful to see a parent in the hospital, and he knew this from experience.

"Is there anything I can do?" Rory asked, twisting her hands in anxiety. "Can I get anything for you guys…I want to do something useful."

Luke recognized those words from four years ago, when Richard had been in the hospital. "Well, I don't know about you, but I could go for some tea right now," he said, reaching into his wallet. "Peppermint, preferably. Maybe your grandparents would, too?" He nodded at Richard and Emily.

"I'm fine, thank you," Emily responded.

"No tea for me, thanks," said Richard.

"Okay. I'll get some coffee for me. I'll be right back." Rory turned and left.

There was a long silence in the waiting room. Finally, Richard turned to Luke and said, "I'm told you were here in this hospital four years ago when I was ill."

Luke blinked, surprised. "Uh…yes, sir, I was."

"And if I remember correctly," Emily said unexpectedly, "you were very uncomfortable here. I seem to remember you saying that you hated hospitals, that everything about them bothered you."

That seemed like a very pointed comment, but Luke had no idea what she was getting at. "Um…yes," he said slowly.

"But today," Emily went on, "we passed all kinds of sick people, people with gaping wounds, all kinds of bad smells, people who looked like they were never going to leave this hospital—and you had absolutely no reaction. You never once took your eyes away from Lorelai."

Luke hadn't even thought about it, but she was right. He'd been so worried he hadn't even let himself take his surroundings in. But he still failed to see what her point was. "Um…" he said again.

"I just find it quite telling," Emily continued, "that you were able to put your fear and dislike of hospitals aside to take care of her when she needed you."

He could read her tone of voice there. He knew she was completely sincere in what she said. "Oh…" he said, unsure of how to respond. "Well—"

"From what I've been told," said Emily, "this is not uncommon coming from you, either. My daughter and granddaughter have not very often had a man in their lives whom they can depend on, but you seem to always be around when Lorelai needs help, and as we've found out quite frequently, Lorelai does not easily accept help."

"That's…true…" Luke replied.

"What I think my wife is trying to say," said Richard, lowering the magazine he had been reading, "is that it is obvious that you care for our daughter and granddaughter very much."

Enormously relieved, Luke let out a long breath. "Well…you're right, sir," he said. "I love Lorelai and Rory, and…" He didn't even know how to finish his sentence.

Richard smiled, put the magazine down, and walked across the waiting room to Luke's chair. "You," he said, shaking Luke's hand, "will make my daughter a fine husband."

Rory returned to the waiting room with Luke's tea just seconds before the doctor entered. "How is she?" Luke asked anxiously, standing up.

"The surgery went smoothly," the doctor replied. "There were no complications, and Lorelai is in the recovery room until she's put into a room. We'll keep her overnight, at least, and after we run some final tests, she should be able to return home."

"Thank God," Emily breathed, and Luke caught her eye. Without saying a word, they shared a little moment of understanding.

"Can I go see my mom?" Rory asked, worry still present in her eyes.

"Absolutely," said the doctor, "but she's on painkillers, so I don't know how coherent she'll be."

"Thank you, doctor," said Richard.

Lorelai was asleep in the recovery room, with an oxygen mask over her face. "You can wake her," said the nurse. "She'll just be pretty doped up."

Luke took her hand and shook in gently. Lorelai stirred, opened her eyes, and tapped on the oxygen mask, which the nurse removed. "Hi, Lorelai," Luke said softly.

"Hi, Mom," Rory whispered, her face looking stricken.

Lorelai managed a weak wave, her eyes squinted open.

"You did great," Luke said. "You're gonna be fine, out of here before you know it."

Rory looked like she was about to cry. "I love you, Mom," she said.

"You…too," Lorelai managed.

"Okay." Luke patted Lorelai's hand. "You go back to sleep now. Get some rest."

Outside the recovery room, he turned to Rory and said, "You okay?"

Rory dissolved into tears halfway through shaking her head. "I'm sorry," she sobbed as Luke closed his arms around her. "It's just…I know she's going to be all right, but it's just so scary to see her _lying _there like that…"

"I know. I know," he said softly, rubbing her back. Memories of his parents' illnesses were coming back to him. "But you'll have your mom back before you know it."

"Yeah, I know." Rory wiped her eyes and looked up at him. "Thank you for everything, Luke."

He patted her on the shoulder. "Anytime," he said.

Emily and Richard had come up behind them. "It's getting late," Richard said.

Luke looked at his watch. "Yes, it is," he said, and suddenly realized how tired he was.

"You're welcome to spend the night at our house," Emily said.

Luke nodded. "Thank you," he said.

(asterisk)

Lorelai was released from the hospital two days later. "I barely even have a scar!" she frowned. "You almost can't see it! After all that trouble, the least they could give me is a visible scar so I can brag about it!"

Luke leaned in and kissed her. "Let's get you home," he said. "It's almost Christmas and we've got a wedding to plan."

When they pulled into the driveway at home, they had barely gotten out of the car when they heard a loud shout of, "Lorelai! Oh, sugar, they told me you were in the hospital. Everyone was asking me when you were coming back and I didn't know what to tell them. Are you all right, doll?"

Lorelai smiled. "I'm more than all right, Babette," she said. "I'm getting married."

Babette's jaw dropped. "You mean…you two…"

"We need to set a date, but yes, we're engaged," she said, showing off her ring.

"Oh, my goodness! Well, that's the best news I've heard all week! I always knew you two would end up together. Morey!" she called inside the house. "Come out here! Luke and Lorelai are getting themselves hitched!"

Everyone in town had been preparing to come over anyway to give Lorelai get-well presents, but the news of their engagement spread so fast that when they did come, Lorelai's illness was almost an afterthought. Patty, who had probably been the one to tell half the people in town, gave them her congratulations before she lamented the dwindling number of available men in Stars Hollow. Taylor congratulated them and then took Lorelai aside to suggest that she use her influence to convince Luke to update the diner's décor. Liz smiled, hugged them both, and said, "I knew it. I knew you two were fated to be together." Sookie jumped up and down and squealed with Lorelai before she started planning what food she'd make for the wedding.

After Christmas was over, they started planning the rest of the wedding. They set a date: Friday, May 20th, at the Dragonfly. Sookie would cater. Lorelai would wear a veil, despite Emily's suggestion that she wear a tiara instead. "It'll be my one last rebellion as an unmarried woman," she said, grinning wickedly.

And then there was the matter of planning the wedding party. Lorelai decided easily that Rory would be her maid of honor, and that Sookie and Lane would also be bridesmaids. But then she also suggested that Liz be a bridesmaid, too.

"Liz?" Luke said doubtfully. "You just met her this year!"

"But she's your sister, Luke. And she was really enthusiastic about us getting married."

Luke groaned. "But if she's in the wedding party, that'll mean T.J. will have to, too!"

"Well, so what? It'll round things out. Right now you only have Jess and Jackson for ushers."

"Fine," he grunted. "But that still leaves me one usher short."

"Well, who else do you know?"

"Oh, I don't know…"

"How about Kirk?" Lorelai suggested.

"_What? _No. No way."

"Aw, come on, Luke! You need one more usher, and it'll make his day."

Luke thought about it for a minute and sighed. "Ah, what the hell."

What Luke was more concerned about, though, was his best man. He'd been talking to Jess once or twice a month since Liz's wedding. He knew that now Jess was going to night school to get his GED, and Luke was proud of him for it. But there was the matter of Jess's previous relationship with Rory, who would be the maid of honor. Luke and Lorelai's marriage would make Rory and Jess step-cousins, which would be awkward, to say the least, if things were still unresolved between them.

"I'm marrying Lorelai," Luke told Jess on the phone.

"Well, it's about damn time," Jess replied. "Congratulations."

"So, if you're not doing anything May 20th," Luke continued, "I'd…I'd like it if you could be my best man."

Jess paused, only for a few seconds. "All right," he said finally.

"You sure?" Luke asked uncertainly. "You're going to be okay with this? You know Rory will be the maid of honor."

Jess sighed. "Well," he said, "I haven't talked to her in…a long time." Jess sounded like he was avoiding saying something there, but Luke opted not to ask what. "But…well, maybe I'll call her or e-mail her or something. It'll be good for us to…get some closure before the wedding…hopefully we will."

"Closure," Luke repeated.

"Yeah. Did I tell you?" Luke could almost hear Jess smiling over the phone. "I met someone."

Luke raised his eyebrows. "No, I definitely would have remembered that," he said. "Who is she?"

"Her name is Leanne." Luke could hear the affection in his nephew's voice as he spoke. "I met her in GED class."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. She's great. We have a lot in common, you know, similar backgrounds, similar taste in books and music…she's even gotten me to quit smoking."

"Well! I like her already."

"What about Rory?" Jess asked. "Is she seeing anyone?"

"She's dating a guy named Ethan. Met him at school."

"Good!" Jess did sound genuinely happy, and Luke was glad.

"So you'll be there for the wedding?"

"Of course I will."

Luke smiled. "Thank you, Jess," he said. "I really appreciate this."

"No problem," Jess replied. "It's the least I can do, you know?"

(asterisk)

There were moments when Luke could feel his parents' presence. His wedding day was one of them. He woke up that day and could almost see their faces beaming at him with pride on the happiest day of his life. They would have loved their new daughter-in-law. Sometimes when he felt them it made him sad, but that day it made him infinitely happier. It was like poetic justice that the two people he wanted to be there the most could be there after all, in spirit.

The rehearsal dinner had been the night before. Jess and Rory had talked, and Luke had finally believed that they had closure with their relationship and could move on. Kirk had brought his entire collection of ties to ask Luke's opinion on which one best matched the wedding's color scheme. T.J. had lamented the lack of male tights at this wedding, and Lorelai had confided to him that she'd been trying her wedding dress on every day since she'd gotten it.

Now, as he watched her walk down the aisle on her father's arm, Luke couldn't believe how beautiful she was. He literally lost his breath as he watched her walk toward him, radiant in her long, white gown. He couldn't remember ever feeling this happy in his life. Here she was, the most beautiful, amazing woman in the world, and she was marrying _him_. Out of all the men in the world, he was the one who got to marry Lorelai Victoria Gilmore.

"_Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?_"

She was standing there with tears in her eyes and the most beautiful smile he'd ever seen on her face.

"_I do_," he breathed.

"_I now pronounce you husband and wife_."

He stepped forward and kissed her, and a new life began.

To be continued…

**A/N: **Just so you know, a ton of stuff is going to happen in Chapter 6, so it might take awhile to write. I will update as soon as I can.

Lyrics by Jim Steinman


	6. Dreams In Reality

**Disclaimer:** They're not mine, but I wish I had a Luke to be mine.

**Author's Notes: **I was trying to figure out whether or not the Gilmores have another bedroom. I don't think they've ever shown another one, but let's say they do, for the purposes of this chapter.

Once again, if anything sounds familiar, it's because it's from my story "The Daddy On the Bus."

Chapter 6

Dreams In Reality

_I know nothing stays the same _

_But if you're willing to play the game_

_It's coming around again_

_And I believe in love_

_But what else can I do_

_I'm so in love with you_

Lorelai came into the kitchen where Luke was eating breakfast. Her face was pale. "Luke," she said, "we need to talk."

They'd been married for a month, and Luke had moved into Lorelai's house right after their honeymoon, in Europe. It had been wonderful to get away from everything, to have each other completely to themselves. But it was a million times more wonderful to be back in Stars Hollow, and to wake up to her every morning. It felt more like home than anything in his life ever had.

Luke looked up. "Talk about what?" He frowned. "Is something wrong?"

"No!" Lorelai laughed once, quickly, nervously. "No, no, nothing's wrong. It's nothing bad. I'm sorry if I gave you the impression it was something bad. Whoa, what am I talking about? It's not just not bad, it's _good_. Like, really, incredibly, life-changingly good. Well, I mean…at least I hope so. It's just…surprising, that's all. Oh," she said, seeing the look on Luke's face, "I thought I'd be able to come up with a better way to tell you, but this just took me by surprise and…" Without another word, she shoved something in front of Luke's face.

Luke blinked, trying to take in what lay in front of him. "This…" he stared. "This is one of those little pregnancy test things."

"Yes, it is."

"And…it's pink."

"Yes, it is."

"What is pink? I mean, what—what does pink mean? Does it mean you're…" He looked at her. Lorelai was beaming. "You're—you're pregnant!" he gasped.

Lorelai nodded. "Well, I have to go to a doctor to confirm it, but…"

"You're…you're having a baby," he stammered.

"It would seem that way."

He just stood there gaping, trying to take it all in.

"Luke," she said, "say something."

He made another attempt. "I'm…" he tried. "You're…" He looked into her eyes and finally smiled. "We're…we're having a baby!" He ran over and hugged her.

Lorelai laughed once and hugged him back. "I—I just can't believe this," she said. "So fast! We haven't even had time to get used to being married."

"Oh, wow," he murmured, so many emotions zinging through him that he felt dizzy.

"Are you okay with this, Luke?" She was looking at him anxiously. "I know you said you would consider having kids, but…I didn't think this would happen so fast."

Luke had never been good with babies, but having a baby with Lorelai would be different. He loved her so much that he knew he would love any child of hers. He had thought, though, that if they had a baby, they'd have more time to plan for it.

"Of course I'm okay with this," he said. "It's just…wow." He ran his fingers through his hair. "It was just not what I expected you to say."

"Oh, I know," said Lorelai, and then turned to walk away. Then she turned around and yelled, "Luke, we're having a baby!" She ran over to him and hugged him again.

(asterisk)

Luke had never felt so much at once. He was excited, thrilled, disbelieving, and terrified. He was having a baby with the woman he loved—but how would he do it? It would be up to him to raise a kid, and how the hell would he do that? How the hell had Lorelai done it? It was the scariest task that had ever been held before him. Would he really be any good at it? But then he thought: _I'm going to be a daddy. _They would be parents together. They would have a child who would call him Daddy and Lorelai Mommy.

He took her to the doctor, and the two of them sat there together, holding hands as they waited for the doctor to come speak to them.

Lorelai's eyes were wide and her breathing was loud. "So…" she said, "is this it? Am I really pregnant?"

The doctor smiled. "Yes," he said. "Our tests show that you are four weeks along. Congratulations."

And it was official. They sat there staring at him until finally Lorelai said, "Luke…" and they turned and hugged each other.

"Four weeks!" Lorelai said. "God, Luke! I got pregnant on our wedding night!"

Luke's face turned red. "Lorelai…" he said under his breath.

"But, Mrs. Danes?" said the doctor.

Lorelai startled a little at that. Luke knew she still wasn't used to thinking of herself as Mrs. Danes.

"We have determined," he said, "that you are carrying two fetuses."

Lorelai blinked. "What?"

"You are pregnant with twins."

They sat there mute for a full ten seconds. "Twins," Luke said faintly, re-adjusting to the idea of Lorelai's pregnancy all over again.

Lorelai looked pale. "I don't believe it," she whispered, sounding more stunned than anything else.

"We're having twins!" Luke turned to his wife and hugged her again. Lorelai managed to smile, but she appeared no less stunned.

Later she said to him, "This is freaky! This is just like in my dream!"

"What dream?"

"Didn't I tell you? Years ago I had a dream that we were married and I was pregnant with your twins."

"Oh…yeah, I think you did."

"Does this mean I'm _psychic_? Are _all_ my dreams going to come true eventually? Because once I had a dream that Taylor was flying on this gigantic bird and got stuck on top of the gazebo. Is _that_ going to happen?"

"Well, that would be entertaining, but…"

"Oh, my God!" she yelled suddenly. "I dreamed once that Rory died!"

"Rory is _not _going to die, and you are not psychic."

"How do you know?"

"I know. And I also know that we," he took her hands, "are having twins."

She smiled and hugged him again. "Oh, God, Luke, we're having twins."

(asterisk)

Rory was living at home that summer while she interned at a TV station in Hartford. She shrieked and hugged them both when Luke and Lorelai told her. "I can't believe this!" she exclaimed. "I'm going to have two siblings…and I'm almost twenty-one! God, I'm old enough to be their mother! I'm older than you were when you had me!"

"Don't remind me," Lorelai groaned.

Lorelai's parents were predictably thrilled. "You know, I always had a hard time imagining this moment," Lorelai said to Luke after they'd told Richard and Emily. "When they'd be _happy _that I was pregnant. I think my brain just has a hard time combining parents, pregnant, and happy in the same sentence."

Luke laughed. "But seriously," he said, "we need to discuss what your parents were talking about."

"How we're going to adjust to all this." Lorelai nodded. "Well, the guest room can become the nursery."

"All right," said Luke gently. "But I was thinking about money. Are we going to be able to afford this?"

Lorelai winced. "It'll be tight," she said. "But…the inn has been doing great lately, and it will probably only get better. And you said the diner's been doing good business lately, and you're Taylor's landlord. Plus, you can always rent out your old apartment if it comes to that."

Luke bit his lip and looked down. "That," he said, "will only be a last resort. Only if we really, really need the money."

He still owned the building where the diner was, and therefore his old apartment. But he hated the idea of renting it out to someone unconnected to the history behind it, someone who would take all of his father's things off the walls and re-paint and change everything. Luke himself had changed his life by marrying Lorelai, but even amid good changes, there were some things he always wanted to keep constant.

"Okay," said Lorelai, her voice understanding.

"What about when we're at work?" Luke said. "Who's going to be watching the kids then? Are we going to hire someone?"

"I guess we're going to have to," said Lorelai unhappily. "That'll get expensive, but I don't see any other option. And of course we'll have to buy all the baby supplies."

"And what about your food cravings?" he said. "Knowing you, that could get expensive, too. And you can't be drinking coffee like you do all the time. They'll be born with two heads."

He expected Lorelai to argue with him, but instead she was just looking at him with a little smile on her face. "What?" he said.

She shook her head. "Nothing," she said. "It's just…weird to have someone be there for me while I'm pregnant. This is so different from when I was pregnant with Rory, and…it's just weird to be sharing this with someone."

"Good weird?" he asked.

"Oh, are we really going to go through this again?" she asked him before she kissed him.

(asterisk)

Babies almost always had bad timing. Their children were no exceptions.

It was February and it was snowing when the phone rang in the diner, which was busy at the moment. He picked it up. "Hello?"

"Luke! My water broke!"

When Luke had imagined that moment, he'd thought that he'd be thrilled and would immediately drop whatever he was doing to drive Lorelai to the hospital. Instead, he found himself saying, "_Now_?"

"Yes, now! Get your ass down here and drive me to the hospital!"

It began to sink in as Luke hung up. The next time he'd come to the diner, he would be the father of twins. He was going to be a daddy.

"Caesar!" he yelled into the kitchen. "Finish taking orders and then lock up. My wife's having our babies!"

The snow was falling heavily, and while he was afraid of not making it to the hospital in time, he was even more afraid of getting into an accident, so he drove as slowly as possible. But they did get there in time, in fact in enough time for Rory to make it to the hospital from Yale.

He stood there next to Lorelai, losing feeling in his hand as she squeezed it with all her strength, saying gently, "Come on, Lorelai. You're doing great."

And then it was over, and they had, first, a baby girl, and then a baby boy.

There had been times in the past when Luke had thought he had been happy. All of those moments were sorrow compared to what he felt right then. Happy did not even begin to describe what he felt as he sat there with his daughter on one arm and his son on the other. They were indescribably tiny and beautiful. Luke was just sitting there with tears streaming down his face, looking at his two dark-haired, blue-eyed babies. He couldn't even speak.

They'd decided on the girl's name awhile ago: Mia Elizabeth. Deciding on a boy's name had been harder. "Maybe we should name him after somebody, too," Lorelai had said.

"Well, his name won't be William," Luke had replied. "If my dad were alive right now, he'd be telling me not to name my kid after him."

"What about for a middle name?"

Luke considered. "Well, maybe…"

They'd searched through baby name books trying to find a good first name, but could never decide on anything. Along the way, though, Lorelai had looked up her own name. "Hey," she'd said, "did you know that your name means 'light?'"

"No, I didn't."

"And did you know that my name means 'romantic siren'?"

Luke had smiled. "As a matter of fact, I did."

"And my father's name means 'powerful, rich, ruler.' Geez, Juliet was wrong."

Now, Lorelai was saying to him, as the doctor checked her blood pressure, "Okay, we cannot put this off forever, because right now we've got Mia Elizabeth and our son whose middle name is William. What is his first name?"

Luke was silent.

Lorelai turned to the doctor. "Hey," she said, "what's your first name?"

The doctor looked surprised. "John," he said.

"Well, John," said Lorelai, "you seem like a nice man. You didn't give me ice chips that served no purpose, you didn't lie to me and tell me it wouldn't hurt like hell, and you told me my babies were beautiful even though I'm sure they look exactly like every other baby you've ever delivered. So, that's his name. John William."

But they'd come up with the middle name first, so they ended up calling him Will.

If it wasn't necessary for them to have food and clothes, Luke would have stopped going to work. All he wanted to do was to stay home with his beautiful little babies. He felt so much that he thought he would burst.

As they got older, Luke could see their developing personalities. Mia was very much her mother's daughter. She laughed at a very early age, never cried when meeting new people, and delighted in everything. Lorelai said she was a much more outgoing baby than Rory had been. Will was more like Luke. He was quieter than his twin sister, and more sensitive. And like his father, he liked routine. He noticed when one of his parents was home later than usual, or if Luke was wearing a different hat.

Rory was accepted as an intern at a major TV station in New York that summer, but she turned it down for her old internship in Hartford. "But this is a big opportunity for you, honey," Lorelai said, sounding concerned. "Are you sure you want to pass it up?"

"I'm sure," Rory said, although she sounded disappointed. "My internship last summer was great, anyway. And if I'm in New York all summer, I'll miss seeing Mia and Will when they're babies. I know that would be something I'd regret when I'm older. Especially since I don't get to see them while I'm at school."

When Lorelai went back to work, they came up with a solution to who would take care of the babies. They'd pay Tobin and drop Mia and Will off at Sookie's house, along with Davey, who by then was almost three.

That September, when Rory went back to Yale for her senior year, Sookie found out that she was pregnant again.

And the next thing Luke knew, it was May and Rory was graduating from Yale. He couldn't believe it. How had the years gone by so fast? It seemed like she had just started high school. And now here she was, his little girl, all grown up and soon to be out of college, with a job lined up at the New York TV station whose internship she had rejected the summer before.

They had a big graduation party planned for her, but just before it, Sookie had complications with her pregnancy that confined her to bed to prevent her baby from being born too early. She had been planning on catering the party, but although that was now out of the question, she insisted from her bed that she knew where to get all the best food, and wrote out a list of where they could get it. Luke and Lorelai split the list up and decided to take care of it themselves.

Then, the night before the graduation, they both picked up a phone extension and called Sookie, who said, "Did you get the salad?"

"Check," said Luke.

"The dip?"

"Check," said Lorelai.

"The crab puffs, vegetables, and rolls?"

"Check, check, and…" Luke glanced at Lorelai.

"Check," she confirmed.

"The little cakes from that bakery in New York?"

There was a long silence.

"Didn't you take care of that?" Lorelai asked him.

"I thought _you _took care of that!"

"No!" wailed Sookie on the phone. "Rory _loves _those cakes! And the only place I know of that has a _remotely _good enough recipe is in New York!"

There was a silence while they all contemplated this. Finally, Luke said, "I could go get them."

"What?" said Sookie and Lorelai at the same time.

"Luke," said Lorelai, "did you hear Sookie say it's in New York?"

"I did," he said. "It's fine. I'll just call in the order now, and tomorrow I'll run to New York and get them."

"But tomorrow's the graduation!"

"I'll leave first thing and I'll be back with plenty of time."

"But your truck's in the shop, Luke! And I need to take the Jeep down to New Haven to meet my parents!"

"So I'll just take the earliest bus."

Lorelai looked at him. "Luke," she said, "it's just cake. It's not a big deal. You don't have to do this."

But over the course of the conversation it had become important to him.

"Yes," he said. "I really do."

But as the bus crawled back to New Haven, he wondered what he was doing there. When he'd decided to go, he'd been thinking of a time when his father had driven back to New York after visiting friends to pick up a wedge of cheese he'd forgotten there. But going to New York to get the cakes, he thought, had just been plain stupid. Rory wouldn't really care whether or not there was cake at her graduation party, but she _would _care whether or not he was at the ceremony.

The old woman sitting next to him asked him what brought him to New Haven, and he told her, "My daughter's graduation." He didn't even think about it. He'd been calling Rory his daughter since he and Lorelai had gotten married. But the next thing he knew, the woman was telling him about how her ex-husband hadn't been at her daughter's college graduation. Her daughter, she said, was divorced now, too, and she was afraid that her little grandson wouldn't know his father.

"When she was growing up, I was so scared that my daughter would think that her father didn't love her," the woman said. "I don't think your daughter has to worry about that."

Luke smiled at her and thanked her. The woman, of course, assumed that he was Rory's biological father. But even so, her words made him feel better. He was still smiling when the bus got to New Haven, with plenty of time to spare.

Lorelai and Mia were waiting for him when he got off the bus. Mia clapped her little one-year-old hands together and exclaimed, "Daddy!"

Luke leaned in and kissed them both. "Where's Will?"

"My parents took him for a little walk," she said. "Come on, let's go."

The ceremony was long and boring, but it was worth it to see Rory walk across the stage to graduate _summa cum laude_. Luke was glad to see that Christopher and his wife and daughter had come, but he had to bite his tongue to keep himself civil when he talked to him. Even though he did seem like a nice guy, Luke didn't like him and never would.

At the graduation party, Rory exclaimed, "Mom! Luke! Where did you get these cakes? They're amazing! They taste exactly like Sookie's!"

Luke and Lorelai just smiled at each other. They'd never tell.

(asterisk)

A few weeks later, Sookie and Jackson's baby was born. By being a boy, Jeremy narrowly escaped being named Colgate like Jackson wanted.

Rory and Ethan broke up shortly after graduation. It was a mutual thing, according to Rory. Their lives were just going in different directions. He was going back home, to Oregon, while she was going off to New York.

Before Luke knew it, two years had passed. That year, Luke received a phone call from Jess.

"I'm getting married," he said.

"You're _what_?"

"I'm getting married, Luke."

Luke blinked, and a smile slowly started to spread across his face. "Well," he said. "Congratulations!"

"We're having the wedding in Stars Hollow," Jess said. "It'll just be a small wedding, so we figure it'll be easier this way. I mean, you're there, my mother's there…"

"What about Leanne's family?"

"She doesn't really have any." Jess's tone grew serious. "She was a foster child. As soon as she turned eighteen, she was on her own."

Luke started. "Oh—"

"I know I didn't exactly have the Norman Rockwell childhood," Jess said, "but…meeting her kind of put some things in perspective for me. I didn't really have it _that _bad, you know? But we had a lot of the same…issues with intimacy, commitment, you know, and, well, we helped each other get over them…partly by committing to each other."

Luke laughed. "Well, good for you."

"The wedding will also be a chance for us to say goodbye," Jess said, his voice taking on a note of sadness. "Leanne has a job lined up in Tampa. We'll be moving there soon."

Luke was quiet for a minute, thinking about this.

"We'll be up to visit," Jess added quickly. "Quite a bit. And I'll give you our phone number as soon as I know it, and—"

"Jess."

Jess said, "Yeah?" like he was expecting Luke to say something more. But although neither of them said it, what they were feeling hung like a fog between them, suspended over the miles of telephone lines, and it didn't even need to be acknowledged.

And that spring, Luke stood and watched his now twenty-four-year-old nephew marry the woman he loved. He didn't doubt that Jess was madly in love with Leanne, either. Leanne was a petite, dark-haired woman who was talkative and full of energy, but had a bit of a rough edge to her. He could tell by the way Jess looked at her that he was crazy about her. It was the same way Luke had often found himself looking at Lorelai early in their relationship. Luke felt the lump in his throat growing as he stood there watching Jess stand at the altar. Jess had found happiness and had become the person he'd been meant to be.

Next to him, Liz, who had tears in her eyes, squeezed his arm. "Look at that," she said softly. "He's here because of you, you know."

Luke blushed. "Oh, I don't…"

"Seriously," Liz said. "Where do you think he'd be if he'd been with me during those years you took him in?" She looked up at Luke and smiled. "Now he has a wife and he has a future _because of you_, Luke."

After the wedding everyone was dancing in the town square, just as they had for Liz's wedding five years earlier. Luke looked at Lorelai and remembered how he had almost asked her to go to that wedding. He wondered what would have happened if he had asked.

"Let's dance," he said to her softly.

Lorelai looked at him in surprise. "You dance?"

"Sometimes I dance," he said. "Come on."

The two of them began to dance together, a sweet, slow waltz. Luke looked directly into her bright blue eyes and felt as though his heart would burst. "You're beautiful," he told her quietly.

"So are you," she murmured. He loved her so much.

(asterisk)

Not long after that, Rory began working for CNN, and the next year, the same year that Leanne gave birth to a baby girl, Elsa, Rory was transferred to Atlanta to work for CNN's International News. She was thrilled about it. "I can't believe this," she said excitedly. "Christiane Amanpour worked there, too! This is _huge_!"

Luke and Lorelai were both happy for her, and gave her their congratulations. But privately, after Rory left, Lorelai cried in Luke's arms.

"I can't believe this," she sobbed. "I mean, part of me is _thrilled, _because she's dreamed of this for so long and now it's happening, but…God, Luke, _Atlanta_? And that'll just be her home base…she'll be traveling all over the world, Luke! It'll be so dangerous! And I've gotten used to her being just a car ride away!"

"Shhh…" Luke soothed, patting her hair. He knew exactly how she felt. He ached inside, thinking of Rory being so far away from them, seeing such danger. But while it was a difficult thing to deal with, he also felt a strange sense of calm. He was nervous for Rory, but although he couldn't even explain it, he had faith in her. "Rory will be okay," he said to Lorelai. "She will. She'll be great at what she does. And she'll be home for the holidays."

The twins were four by then, and going to preschool. Mia had just started ballet class at Miss Patty's. She couldn't stop talking about it. "Ooh! Today at ballet class we did plies and Jenny from preschool was there and Miss Patty said she met this man and he was famous back in eighteen sixty nine!"

Will, as he had been as a baby, was much quieter. Luke and Lorelai were reading to the twins every night, and it wasn't long before they figured out that Will could read on his own. Now he spent a lot of time flipping through the pages of his books while listening intently to the music that Mia was busy dancing crazily around the room to.

Over the next year, they'd watch CNN, often seeing something with Rory's name on it. She wasn't ever in front of the camera herself, but she wrote and produced pieces on many international crises. "The one good thing about all this," said Lorelai, "is that I now have absolutely no excuse for not knowing what's going on in the world. Rory's giving me a reason to be able to say in conversation, "So what are your thoughts on the recent developments in the Middle East?"

Rory sent postcards from the places she visited, always sounding enthusiastic and exuberant. But when she called home, her tone was much more serious. She'd seen impoverished villages and buildings that had been bombed. One time, she called home in tears. "I just watched a little boy die," she sobbed. "There was gunfire and someone shot him _and I saw the whole thing_!"

Luke felt his heart breaking. Rory had been a very lucky child. She'd grown up loved and protected in a very sheltered environment, without ever experiencing much serious pain. Lorelai had been there to protect her, and when she hadn't, there'd been Luke, or anyone else in Stars Hollow, there to yank her out of the way of speeding cars. But out there in the real world, speeding cars ran wild, and now she had to learn to deal with them.

Luke looked at his little daughter and son and shuddered. They were so young now, and so happy most of the time, but someday they would have to deal with the real world on their own. Luke knew, and Lorelai felt the same way, that he would do anything to protect them, and would prevent them from experiencing pain to the best of his ability. But he realized then that as much as he wanted to protect them from the evils of the world, he couldn't deny to them that those evils existed.

(asterisk)

Rory came home for Christmas in 2011, and everyone was thrilled. Mia was jumping up and down and Will was beaming with excitement at seeing his big sister again. Lorelai and Luke were beside themselves at seeing her again, and Rory was grinning from ear to ear. She seemed a million times happier than she ever had on the phone.

When she got a moment alone with her mother and stepfather, Rory said, "Well, I have a couple of pieces of news."

"A couple? You work for CNN. I'd hope you'd have more than that," said Lorelai.

Rory smiled. "Personal news, I mean."

"Oh? Good or bad?"

"Good. Very good." Rory stopped and took a deep breath. "Well, first of all, I met someone."

"What?!" exclaimed Luke, just as Lorelai said, "When? Why did I not know about this?"

"I wanted to wait until I was sure," said Rory. "And…well, I'm pretty sure now."

"Who is he?" Lorelai demanded, obviously still in shock.

"His name is Gabriel Callahan."

"How did you meet him? Where is he from?"

"I met him in Atlanta," she said. "When I was there, before I started doing some major traveling, I was part of this book discussion group, and I met him there. He's a lawyer, and he went to law school in Georgia, but he's actually originally from Hartford."

"Hartford."

"Yes. He went to Boston College, he was an English major there."

"And…how long have you been together?" Lorelai asked, crossing her arms.

"Almost a year," Rory answered, looking very uncomfortable.

"Well, Rory, that's great," said Luke a bit too enthusiastically, trying to ease the tension. "Are we going to get to meet him?"

"Actually, that brings me to my other piece of news," said Rory, smiling nervously. "Gabriel and I both really miss home, so…we think we're going to look for jobs here in Connecticut and move back here."

"_Really_?" said Luke just as Lorelai said sharply, "You're _what_?!"

"Mom!"

"You're just moving back here, just like that? What about CNN?"  
"I don't think that's going to be my thing, after all," Rory said quietly. "Like I said, I miss home. And…I don't know, TV was never my thing. What I would really love is to get into print journalism, I think."

Lorelai was standing there with a disbelieving look on her face. "So that's it," she said. "You're giving up, just like that? Just because you had some rough times? Because you got a little homesick?"

"I'm not giving _up_, Mom! I just don't want this anymore!"

"But you've _always _wanted this!" Lorelai cried. "Ever since you were young. You always wanted to travel and see the world! When you were five and people asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up, you said, 'I want to be a traveler who goes all over the world!'"

"Well, it turns out the world is overrated," Rory retorted. "I'd prefer to be back home. And so would Gabriel."

"_Gabriel_," Lorelai repeated, aghast. "So is _that _what this is about? You're throwing away your career because of some guy?"

"_No_!" cried Rory.

Lorelai's eyes widened. "Are you _pregnant_?"

"No, of course not!" Rory blew a frustrated breath of air out of her cheeks. "But someday I might be. And when I do have kids, I don't want to be off in a foxhole while they're having their first steps."

Lorelai shook her head. "I can't believe this. I never for a minute thought that you would give up your lifelong dreams over a guy."

Rory stood up, tears in her eyes. "I'm happy about this, Mom. I don't know why you aren't, too." Then she turned and ran upstairs.

Luke looked at Lorelai in bewilderment. "What the hell was that about, Lorelai? I thought you'd be thrilled to have her close to home."

"I _am_, Luke," she said, a bit more calmly. "But…I just can't believe she'd walk away from an opportunity like this. She's got an Ivy League degree, an incredible job, she gets to travel and see the world…all the things I never got to do. And she's giving it all up over a guy. That's something _I _would do. Or would have done years ago."

"She's not you, Lorelai," Luke said quietly. "She knows what she wants. And she wants home."

"But she's always wanted to see the world! Ever since she was old enough to _have _dreams, Luke."

"But sometimes dreams change," he said gently. "You didn't always want to own your own inn. I didn't always want to run a diner. Hell, I didn't always want to be married with kids! And now…now I wouldn't change anything in my life for the world."

Lorelai was silent, contemplating this.

"You two aren't going to be mad each other all through Christmas, are you?" he said. "She's going to be living here, and she may very well end up marrying this guy. It would probably be better to make up sooner."

Lorelai sighed and was quiet for a long time. "I'll be upstairs," she said finally, and turned and went to look for Rory.

(asterisk)

A couple of months later, Rory and Gabriel had both found jobs: hers writing for the _Hartford Courant_, his as a public defender. That was when Luke and Lorelai first met him. "Talked to my parents, and apparently Mr. Callahan is from some rich Hartford family," Lorelai told Luke before they met him. "But apparently he's like the black sheep or something because he didn't go into his father's law firm and bucked tradition. I like this kid already."

Both Luke and Lorelai liked him even more after meeting him. Gabriel was tall and handsome, with light brown hair, green eyes, and a warm, genuine smile. He was polite and had a both good sense of humor and a friendly, easy way of speaking. He was a few years older than Rory, and against his family's wishes, he'd joined a law firm in Atlanta instead of his father's in Hartford. That increased Lorelai's approval of him tenfold. But recently, he'd realized that he would rather do something that contributed to society than defend corporate greed, so he'd decided to start defending people who couldn't afford lawyers. He'd also opted to move closer to home. Although he didn't always get along with his family, he missed them and wanted to be closer to them. That increased Luke's approval of him tenfold.

More importantly, Gabriel really seemed to be in love with Rory, and she seemed to feel the same way. Apparently, they had a lot in common, too. Over dinner, they got into an impassioned argument over James Joyce, and Lorelai threw Luke a look that said _Yep__, match made in heaven_.

Barely a month later, they were engaged, and later that year, Luke stood there with tears in his eyes as Rory walked down the aisle. This was it. His daughter had really grown up into a beautiful, talented young woman. As they stood there, she and Gabriel looked as if they had found the great happiness of their lives, the way he and Lorelai had.

The reception was in the town square in Stars Hollow, and all the townies were crying themselves, remembering Rory as a child and lamenting the years gone by. Mia and Will, who had been the flower girl and ring bearer respectively, were having the times of their lives. Mia was dancing around crazily, the way she often did at home, and showing off the dance she'd learned at Miss Patty's.

Rory and Gabriel shared their first dance, and then, Rory danced not only with her father, but with her mother and stepfather as well. Luke felt the tears welling up in his eyes all over again as they shared a dance. When it was over, he kissed her cheek and said, "I'm so proud of you."

(asterisk)

Rory and Gabriel bought a house in Stars Hollow, which was wonderful. It made up for all the lost time while she'd been working for CNN. They came over for dinner quite frequently, which Luke and Lorelai were savoring. Mia and Will were thrilled as well that they got to see their big sister so much more. Currently, Rory was both writing for the _Courant _and working on a book that discussed in detail some of the injustices she'd seen in foreign countries.

The twins were in first grade now. Both of them were excellent students whom their teachers had nothing bad to say about. Mia was still taking those dance lessons, and was still her happy-go-lucky self, breezing through life and finding something new to enjoy every day.

Will was different. Like Lorelai said Rory had at his age, he was constantly reading. He'd also started taking piano lessons, finally putting the piano in the living room to use. He was surprisingly a natural at it. "Where did he get that from?" Lorelai said to Luke one day in astonishment. "Neither of us has any musical talent. Is it some kind of recessive gene that we both passed on to him?"

But Will was also coming home from school crying some days, which had his parents very concerned. He wouldn't tell them what was wrong, no matter how much they asked, until finally Luke took him out to Johnson's for an ice cream. "It's gym class," Will sniffled. "I can't throw, I can't catch…I can't do anything, and everybody laughs at me!"

Luke was surprised. "Oh, Will," he said sympathetically, reaching over to ruffle his son's hair. "Don't worry about that. They don't know anything." He thought for a moment. "Why don't we play catch when we get back home? Get you some practice."

"No, thanks," mumbled Will.

"Why not?" Luke asked. "You're not going to get better at it if you don't work at it! You need to practice it."

"I don't _want _to practice it, Dad!" Will's voice rose as he spoke, and Luke was taken back by his intensity.

"Okay," he answered quickly.

(asterisk)

Rory and Gabriel were over at Luke and Lorelai's house for dinner one night, as they were quite frequently, when Rory said, "We have an announcement to make."

Luke and Lorelai glanced at each other. "A married couple with an announcement," Lorelai said, her tone full of hopeful anticipation. "That can only mean one thing…right?"

Rory nodded, smiling hugely. "I'm pregnant," she said.

Lorelai's jaw dropped before she yelled, "Congratulations!" and hugged Rory, then Luke. Happy but stunned, Luke hugged her back. "Oh, my God, Luke, we're going to be grandparents! I'm only forty-four and I'm going to be a grandmother!"

"Grandparents," Luke murmured, still stunned. He couldn't believe it. He'd only recently begun to experience fatherhood, and now he'd be a grandfather, too.

"And you two!" Lorelai said to Will and Mia. "You two are going to be an aunt and an uncle!"

Mia said, "What?" just as Will protested, "But uncles are _old_!"

After they'd toasted with ginger ale, Lorelai asked, "So, have you thought about names? Because I recommend waiting until you're done with the Demerol, lest we end up with another Lorelai who we have to think up a nickname for."

"Well," said Gabriel, "we're thinking about naming the baby after a character from literature."

"I still like Brett Ashley," said Rory.

"No! Please! I told you, I hate Hemingway!" Gabriel protested. "How about Emma?"

"Flaubert or Austen?"

"Either one, really."

"Well, one's a meddling busybody and one cheats on her husband and commits suicide, so I'd say Emma's a no."

"What about Anna? As in Karenina?"

"Okay, good rule of thumb: let's not name our baby after anyone who _killed herself_!"

"How about Jane? Or Dominique?"

"Hmmm…well, assuming we're talking Bronte and Rand, those are possibilities."  
"These are all girl's names," Lorelai interrupted. "How do you know it's a girl?"

Rory patted her stomach and smiled absently. "I just know," she said.

Sure enough, months later, after Gabriel called Luke and Lorelai excitedly and told them that Rory was in labor and they should get down to the hospital as soon as possible, and the two of them, along with Mia and Will, had sat outside the room for hours, the new father emerged beaming to tell them to come see baby Caddy.

"Oh, my God," Lorelai whispered. For once, she was speechless as she held her first grandchild with a huge smile on her face.

Luke felt indescribable as he held his baby granddaughter. He felt incredible love for her, the same love he had for his children without the anxiety that came along with it. "She's beautiful," he said, all choked up.

"Her name is Caddy?" Lorelai asked.

"Candace Lorelai, to be exact," Rory said, smiling. "We finally decided on a name."

"And what novel did that come out of?"

"Faulkner's _The Sound and the Fury_," said Gabriel promptly.

Lorelai's expression was blank. "Refresh me. I think I dropped out of high school before I got to read that book."

"Well," said Rory, "Caddy Compson is a girl who grows up in a very wealthy family in the 1920s, and she's very beautiful and very caring. Her youngest brother is retarded, and she's the only one who can understand him. But she has a rebellious spirit, and she ends up getting pregnant before she's married. Her family casts her out and won't even let her see her daughter, but she never stops caring for them."

Lorelai wrinkled her forehead. "So you named your daughter after a 1920s slut?"

"No," said Rory. "I named her after a woman who loved her family even under the worst of circumstances, and who made the best out of what she had for her daughter's sake."

Lorelai smiled and closed her eyes, seeming touched but deep in thought. "Well," she said, "when you put it that way, I don't think you could have come up with a better name."

(asterisk)

"Daddy, what are you making?"

It was a couple of weeks before Lorelai's forty-fifth birthday. Luke glanced up from his table in the corner of the basement to see Mia standing at the top of the basement steps.

"Okay, come down here and I'll tell you, but it's a secret," Luke said, motioning for her to come toward him. Mia ran eagerly down, and just as she did, Will appeared at the top of the stairs.

"What is this?" he asked.

"Okay, you come down here, too," said Luke, and his son joined them. "All right," Luke continued, "you two have to promise you won't say anything, but I'm making your mom a clock for her birthday."

"Really?" said Mia.

"How are you doing that?" asked Will.

"Well, I'm just taking an old clock and putting it into a new frame," he said. "And I'm carving the frame with these designs that I hope your mom will like."

"Cool!" said Mia.

"But," Luke said seriously, "like I said, you two may not spoil the surprise for your mom, and," he pointed at them for emphasis, "you may not go _anywhere_ near this table. Understood?" The twins nodded.

"Good," he said, and went back to work.

The day before Lorelai's birthday, Luke made dinner, and when it was done, he yelled, "Okay, dinner's ready, come eat!"

Lorelai came down from her room, and Mia came out of her bedroom, which had been Rory's, but Will was nowhere to be found.

"Will!" Luke called again. "Hey, Will, it's dinnertime!" Still no answer.

Lorelai frowned. "Where is he?"

"I thought he was in the basement using the computer," said Luke. He opened the basement door and called, "Will?" Hearing no answer, he walked down the steps. "Will?" He checked the computer area where Will had been playing games. He was nowhere.

"Will?" Luke ran up the basement steps and searched the rest of the house, then ran upstairs and checked Will's bedroom, along with the bathrooms and his and Lorelai's bedroom. "Will?"

He ran back downstairs. Lorelai's face looked pale. "Is he out in the yard?" she asked. Luke ran outside, beginning to panic, and yelled, "Will! Will, answer me!" No one did.

Becoming shaky of breath, Luke saw Babette standing on her porch and yelled, "Babette! Have you seen Will?"

Babette frowned and shook her head. "No, can't say I have. Why? Has he gone missing?"

Luke didn't bother to answer. He just ran back into the house and blurted to Lorelai, "He's not there. Babette hasn't seen him."

Lorelai grabbed a chair and looked as if she was going to faint. "Oh, my God," she said.

"Don't panic," said Luke, doing his best to keep his voice calm. "This is Stars Hollow. He can't have gone far. Someone is bound to have seen him." Lorelai was starting to hyperventilate. "Here. I'll go out and look for him, you call everyone we know and see if they've seen him."

It was dark out, and his panic was rising by the minute. Luke could not remember ever being so scared in his life. "Will!" he screamed as he went around looking. "Will!" He wasn't at the diner. He wasn't at Doose's. He wasn't in the town square. He wasn't in any of the stores, most of which were closed by then, anyway.

Luke stopped and tried his best to catch his breath. Had Will drowned or been hit by a car? Had he been kidnapped? Luke had always thought that kidnapping could never happen in Stars Hollow. _God, I've been stupid. I've sheltered my kids too much_, he thought angrily as his body started shaking with fear.

"Will!" he yelled again. He ran to the lake, over to the bridge where so many important things seemed to happen.

And there, in the same place Jess had been years ago after the car accident, was his little boy, staring into the water with a tearstained face.

Luke stopped. "Will," he said, his voice breaking.

Will looked up, new tears in his eyes. "I broke the clock, Dad. I'm sorry."

Luke blinked.

"I was in the basement trying to practice throwing a ball and catching it and it just hit the table by accident. I'm sorry," he sobbed.

So many emotions hit Luke at once—relief, guilt, anger at himself—but above all, he felt an incredible burst of love. Without a word, he picked Will up and kissed his forehead. Then he carried him all the way home.

A white-faced Lorelai met them at the door. "Will!" she cried, running over to give him a kiss. "Are you all right? Is he all right?" she asked Luke franticly.

"He's fine," Luke assured her. "He needs to get to bed."

Luke carried him up the stairs to his bedroom, turned down the bed, and gently laid him down on it. He kissed his son again. "I love you, Will," he said.

"I love you, too," Will murmured.

Still dazed by everything, Luke went downstairs. Lorelai was on the phone, calling back everyone she'd called asking about Will. "Patty! Hi, thanks for all your help, but we've found Will, Luke just came in with him…yes, he's all right…"

Luke wandered over to the window and stared outside, at the town that had been his since he was born. He remembered what Rory had said just before she'd moved back: "It turns out the world is overrated."

He wondered whether she was right. Maybe the world really was overrated. But it didn't matter. To Luke, this was where the world began and ended, and he wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

To be continued…

**A/N: **Sorry, I just _had _to throw in a BC reference! (I'll be a junior there in the fall.) And, by the way, read _The Sound and the Fury _if you haven't already. It's very confusing, but once you figure it out, it's an awesome book. And I really do see a lot of parallels between Caddy and Lorelai.

Lots of interesting things happened while I was writing this chapter. I finally won expert Minesweeper, for one thing. (I'm obsessed with that game. According to my roommate I even talk about it in my sleep.) And a good deal of this chapter was written on the commuter rail from Lowell to Boston.

Seven is a lucky number. There'll be seven Harry Potter books. There will hopefully be seven seasons of _Gilmore Girls_. And there will be seven chapters of "The Good One." So the next chapter will be the last. Stay tuned, and thank you all for reading.

Lyrics by Carly Simon


	7. The World Is Overrated

****

Disclaimer: They haven't been mine through the first six chapters, and they ain't mine now.

****

Author's Notes: This is the end of "The Good One." More notes at the end. **Romantique: **Nope, no implication, just a shameless BC reference because that's the school I go to.

Chapter 7

The World Is Overrated

__

Well I've been afraid of changing

Cause I built my life around you

But time makes you bolder

Children get older

I'm getting older, too

I'm getting older, too…

Years passed, and Luke and Lorelai had been married for twenty-five years. The twins had been out of college for a few years. Mia, who had graduated from UConn, was living in a townhouse in Stars Hollow and teaching first grade at Stars Hollow Elementary. Will, who had graduated from Yale and gotten his MBA, was also living in Stars Hollow while working for a company in Hartford.

Earlier that year, Luke had gone to the doctor, and afterwards, had said to his wife and children, "I need to go back to the doctor. They need to run some tests." His palms had sweated as he swallowed hard, a horrible feeling of déjà vu hitting him. "There's a possibility that I might have cancer, and I just wanted to let you know so that you won't be surprised if I do."

The day his father had said almost the same thing to him was coming back to haunt him. All his life, he had hoped to be half the man Bill Danes had been. But the one thing he had hoped to rectify was his father's short life. Although Luke was older than the age his father had lived to—Rory, who was forty-six now, was closer to it—Mia and Will weren't much older than he had been when his father had died. Luke hoped as hard as he could that the tests would turn out negative. It would be too horrible, too ironic for him to have cancer as his parents had. It just couldn't happen.

But a doctor's solemn gaze told him that it could.

And the doctor's grave face that came months later, after he'd endured the pain of chemotherapy, after Stars Hollow had come rushing to help out in any way they could, after his family had done extra work at the diner and fought successfully to keep it alive despite Luke's absence, with the news that the cancer had metastasized beyond the point where they could treat it, confirmed that his worst fears were possible as well.

(asterisk)

He was numb. He was sixty-eight years old—not young by any means, but still too young to be dying. Lorelai was sixty-three, and in less than a year, she would be a widow. The twins were twenty-five, just beginning to get the hang of adulthood. He wouldn't be alive to see them marry or have children. He wouldn't be able to walk Mia down the aisle at her wedding. Rory was an award-winning newspaper columnist and the author of a bestselling book. Caddy was eighteen, and going to start at Yale in the fall. He wouldn't live to see the rest of the great things his daughter and granddaughter would accomplish.

He was worried about Lorelai more than anything else. He was afraid she hadn't really let the news sink in. When Richard had died suddenly of a heart attack three years earlier, she'd first snapped into action, planning the funeral, comforting her mother, and only afterwards had cried and let her emotions go. But she had seemed completely blank when they had gotten the news about Luke. Now she wasn't talking about it at all, but she wasn't going about her business as usual, either. She was just quiet and contemplative all the time, and that made him sadder than anything. She was quiet when he told their children, and quiet when a hospital bed was brought into their house, so he could die at home.

It was horrible. He was used to the Lorelai he had fallen in love with, the happy, in-love-with-the-world woman who just blurted out whatever she was thinking. And now, as he was dying, when what he wanted more than anything was the old Lorelai, she was gone.

Then one day he found her in their bedroom, staring at a plastic cup.

She heard him come in and turned around, revealing the tears in her eyes. "It's the punch cup from the first night we kissed," she sobbed. "During the fireworks. On the bridge. I saved it."

And Luke felt tears welling up in his own eyes. He went over and hugged his wife, rubbing her back as she sobbed.

"I always thought I'd be the first to go," she blubbered into his flannel shirt. "And you'd be yelling at me, telling me I should have listened to you and not eaten all that junk, and you'd be able to say 'I told you so.'"

He kissed her forehead, stroking her hair.

"I hate seeing you sick," she sniffled. "I hate that you have to suffer so much."

"But maybe this is better," he said gently. "We have time to prepare for it."

Lorelai wiped her eyes. "God," she said. "I never thought I'd have to plan your funeral." She paused. "How should I plan your funeral?"

Luke sighed. "Honestly?" he said. "I'll be dead. I want you to do whatever is easiest for _you_."

"It won't be easy if I'm worrying about whether I'm doing what you would have wanted."

Luke was quiet for a moment. Then he sighed. "No flowers," he said. "I hate flowers. They're useless. They're pretty for about two days, and then they rot and smell up the house. Please, tell people not to bring flowers."

Lorelai nodded slowly, and he could tell she was finally letting the reality of the situation sink in. "Do you want them to make contributions to a charity in your name or something?"

"If that's what makes them feel good, they can go for it," he replied. "I'm not forcing anyone to give money to anything."

"Okay…" she said. "What else?"

"Cheapest coffin you can find," he said. "The damn coffin-sellers try to guilt you into spending a fortune on a really nice coffin. Well, I'll be dead and it'll be a waste of money, so please ignore whatever they say and buy a cheap one."

"What about inside the coffin?" She looked at him. "Is there anything you want to be buried with you?"

Luke was silent, thinking about it. Then he took the hat he was wearing off his head and said, "This."

Lorelai blinked. "The hat?"

"The hat you bought me for Christmas, years ago," he said. "I want to hang onto this. But nothing else."

She began to cry again. "I love you, Luke," she said, burying her face in his shirt.

"I love you, too," he said. He tilted her chin up and wiped some of the tears away.

"What am I going to do without you?" she sobbed. "I don't know what I'll do!"

"Hey," he said, almost sternly. "Don't say that. The Lorelai I know and love can handle this. I love that you can…find joy everywhere, no matter what the circumstance. You got pregnant at sixteen but managed to be a great mom and a successful innkeeper. You got the Dragonfly up and running from nothing. You helped repair your relationship with your parents after things between you got bad." He looked at her seriously. "And you can live without me. And even if it doesn't feel that way now, you _will _be happy again."

"I know," she said, almost inaudibly. She rested her head against him again. "I'll just miss you so much."

(asterisk)

It was July 3rd, and Luke was remembering the moments he'd spent with his family recently.

How he'd sat with Mia in the gazebo, and Mia, a tall, thin, beautiful woman who looked very much like her mother, had cried and told him how grateful she was to have a father whom she could talk to about anything. In middle school and high school, she'd said, she'd had nothing to say when her friends complained about their parents. Luke had hugged her and told her how much he loved her and how proud he was of her as he cried with his beautiful youngest daughter.

How he'd gone with Will to Johnson's Ice Cream, like he had when Will was young, and he'd asked Will how work was going. Will, who had his father's eyes, had been silent. Luke had known for awhile that Will hadn't been enjoying the work he'd been doing, and he'd said, "You were never meant to be a suit, Will. Find something that makes you happy." Will had said, "I love you, Dad," and Luke had hugged him, this son who was so like him but so unlike him at the same time, but who had always needed him so badly, and choked out, "Take good care of your mother, Will. She likes to handle things on her own, but…there will be times when she'll need you, and I know you can be there."

How he'd made Rory chocolate chip pancakes with extra chocolate, and Rory had cried, and remembered when Luke had baked her a coffee cake and blown up balloons for her birthday thirty years ago. "You were always there for me and my mom," she sobbed, "even when you didn't have to be." She'd hugged him and continued, "You were more of a father to me than anyone's ever been. I love you, Luke." He'd hugged her back, his sweet little girl who had grown up into an amazing writer and a loving wife and mother, and said, "I love you, Rory."

How he'd gone for a walk with Caddy down by the lake. Caddy, who was a young woman now, slim with Rory's big, innocent eyes, had cried and told him she loved him. He had hugged her and told her how proud he was of her and how much he loved her, too.

How Jess and his family had come up to see him. He'd seen his grandniece, Elsa, who was studying English in college, which her parents had never gotten to do. Jess had said, sounding almost amazed and on the verge of tears, "I can't even imagine where I'd be without you." Luke had hugged him and said, for the first time he could remember, "I love you, Jess."

How he and Liz had walked through their old neighborhood, and Liz had reminisced with him ("Remember when I used to make popsicle-stick castles all the time? Remember when you wore that _Star Trek _shirt every day? Remember when you threw toilet paper all over the gazebo?") before she had stopped and looked at him and said, "All those times I got into trouble, all those times I needed help, I just kept thinking, '_This _time he's not going to help me. _This _time he won't care." She'd stopped to catch her breath, her odd eyes shining with tears, before she continued. "But you always did." He'd said, gently, "Of course I did. You're my sister. I love you," and they'd hugged and cried together. "You've always been my hero," Liz had said.

"Hey." The voice startled him, and he looked up to see Lorelai standing there. She was holding the plastic punch cup. She managed a smile. "It's July 3rd," she said. "I know a place where we could have our own private fireworks show."

And so they sat there on the bridge, a couple in their sixties watching fireworks together as they had years before, when they'd shared their first kiss.

He looked at her. Years had passed, but she was still Lorelai, and he still loved her more than he had ever thought possible. He reached over and squeezed her hand. "You're the most beautiful person in the world," he said sincerely. "How did I get so lucky?"

"_I'm_ the lucky one," Lorelai said, squeezing back. She sighed. "I can barely remember a time when you weren't there," she said, her voice breaking. "That's who you've always been. The guy who's there, no matter what."

"I'll still be there," he said softly. "My parents are still here with me sometimes. And I'll be here for you." He leaned in and kissed her.

She was silent for a minute, thinking. "We had a lot of great times, didn't we?"

"Yes," he said. "We did." Another moment of quiet. "I love you, Lorelai."

"I love you, Luke." They sat there in silence for awhile. Then Lorelai rested her head on his shoulder and said, "Do you ever think about heaven?"

He put his arm around her. "Sometimes," he said. "There are times when I try to imagine it."

Above them was a burst of blue, then a burst of orange. He looked at her and repeated the words she'd said to him years ago, at Christmas, after she'd given him the hat he'd be buried with, as they stood in the diner together: "But it's hard to imagine living anyplace else, isn't it?"

(asterisk)

****

Lucas Danes, Owner of Luke's Diner, 68

Lucas William "Luke" Danes, a lifelong Stars Hollow resident, died July 20, 2031, after a long illness. He was 68.

Mr. Danes was born March 28, 1963 in Hartford, Connecticut, son of the late William Danes and the late Sheila (Hoffman) Danes. He graduated from Stars Hollow High School in 1981 and from Southern Connecticut State University in 1985. That same year, he established Luke's Diner, a prominent Stars Hollow eatery, in the building that had been his father's hardware store. He was the husband of Lorelai Gilmore Danes, with whom he celebrated over twenty-five years of marriage.

Mr. Danes enjoyed baseball, fishing, and spending time with his family and loved ones.

Besides his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Mia Elizabeth Danes; a son, John William Danes; a stepdaughter, Rory Callahan and her husband Gabriel; a granddaughter, Candace Lorelai Callahan; and a sister, Elizabeth Jordan and her husband Gary, all of Stars Hollow. He is also survived by his mother-in-law, Emily Gilmore of Hartford; a nephew, Jess Mariano and his wife Leanne of Tampa, Florida; and a grandniece, Elsa Mariano of Tampa.

(asterisk)

Heaven was as good as he'd heard, and.he found that he could, in fact, see his family from heaven as clearly as if he was there with them. He remembered what Lorelai had said to him before his Uncle Louie's funeral, about his father: _He's got the big Luke picture screen on twenty-four hours a day, and he watches and smiles_.

He had picture screens of his own now: the Lorelai screen, the Rory screen, the Mia screen, the Will screen, the Caddy screen, the Jess screen, the Liz screen, the Stars Hollow screen. And what he saw on them was something he'd never anticipated: the sheer number of people who came to his wake and funeral. It was like watching his father's wake all over again.

"He was a good man, your father," the good people of Stars Hollow were saying to Mia and Will, and he knew they were sincere. In heaven, you didn't wonder, you knew.

He was watching as people shared their stories: "He took you to the hospital when your father was sick." "He found those lost Easter eggs and let me take the credit." "He dropped everything to come help me when I needed it." "He gave me a chance when no one else would." "He helped out me and my mom even when he didn't have to." "He gave me a job, and then he gave it right back to me after I quit." "He came and fixed things around the house." "He gave me money when I needed it." "He came to watch me dance, even though he had to sit through the whole thing." "He found me sitting on the bridge, and he just picked me up and carried me all the way home."

He was watching when Rory's column won a Pulitzer Prize a few years later.

He was watching when Mia got married the following year and had a baby boy named for him.

He was watching when the town came rushing to do whatever they could for Lorelai, and he was thrilled when, finally, although she would always miss him, Lorelai was able to smile again, and to go back to the woman she was.

He was watching when Will, the son who was so much like him, stood one day in the empty diner, looking around, deep in thought.

And when Will quit his job in Hartford, knowing, as Luke had told him, that he wasn't really a suit.

And when Will moved into the apartment above the diner, and came downstairs one morning, unlocked the door, and said with a smile to a new customer, "Welcome to Luke's. First time's on the house."

****

The End

**A/N: **Yeah, I know, I hated doing it. Because Luke is the man, and as my sister would say, "You can't kill the man!"

But can I just say that I had an absolute blast writing this fanfic? I'd never done a WIP before, and the support I got while writing it was just mind-blowing. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who gave reviews, and please, keep them coming. I don't even care if you yell at me for the way I ended it. The nicest thing is that I'm getting reviews from a lot of authors who I really respect, so just the fact that you're reading this means a lot.

Thank you so much to everyone at the TWoP boards. My goal as a fanfic writer was to be mentioned in TWoP's fanfic thread, and you guys made it happen. I love you for it.

Thank you to Christina, who, when I told her I was having trouble writing Lorelai realistically, replied, "Just think of something I would say!" Love ya, hon, even if you do mercilessly make fun of my fic-addic (dirty!).

By the way, I made a playlist of all the songs whose lyrics begin the chapters. In case you were wondering, here's "The Good One" playlist:

1. "Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitchell

2. "When I Look at the World" by U2

3. "Brilliant Disguise" by Bruce Springsteen

4. "Pale Blue Eyes" by Velvet Underground

5. "You Took the Words Right Out of my Mouth" by Meat Loaf

6. "Coming Around Again" by Carly Simon

7. "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac

Writing this was a great exercise- at least, that's what I tell myself to justify it, so that I'm _not _wasting time. But contrary to popular opinion, I do have something resembling a life, so I need to get back to it. I want to get some original stuff written, but hopefully I'll also write at least a couple of new fanfics by the end of the summer.

Lyrics by Stevie Nicks


End file.
